Hi 


TEACHING  THE  DRAMA 
AND  THE  ESSAY 


BROTHER  LEO 


TEACHING  THE  DRAMA 
AND  THE  ESSAY 


BY 

BROTHER  LEO 

OF   THE   BROTHERS  OF  THE   CHRISTIAN    SCHOOLS 


NEW  YORK 
SCHWARTZ,  KIRWIN  &  FAUSS 


COPYRIGHT,  1921,  BY 
SCHWARTZ,  KIRWIN  &  FAUSS 


NOTE 

THIS  little  book  is  made  up  of  talks  to  teachers 
and  of  papers  that  originally  saw  the  light  in  the 
hospitable  pages  of  The  Catholic  School  Journal. 
It  has  no  pretensions  whatever  and  makes  no  at- 
tempt to  offer  a  complete  and  articulated  "phi- 
losophy" of  teaching  literature.  But  it  seeks  to  be 
of  service  to  the  young  teacher  who  in  perplexity 
remarks:  "I  must  teach  a  Shakespearean  play  and 
a  book  of  selected  essays  next  term.  How  am  I  to 
go  about  it?" 

No  intrinsic  originality  inheres  in  the  view  of 
vital  appreciation  set  forth  in  these  pages. 
Aristotle's  conception  of  the  emotionally  cathartic 
function  of  tragedy,  Shakespeare's  ideal  of  hold- 
ing the  mirror  up  to  nature,  Milton's  plea  for  the 
great  book  as  the  precious  life  blood  of  a  master 
spirit,  and,  in  our  own  day,  Mr.  J.  B.  Ker foot's 
definition  of  reading  as  a  form  of  living — all  these 
opinions  agree  in  the  recognition  of  the  essentially 
vital  character  of  literary  study.  But  old  truths 
sometimes  need  new  renderings,  however  partial 
and  inadequate. 

Behind  every  book,  even  the  slightest  and  slen- 


Cf  f\  *""  O    •""   **t 

50o857 


VI  NOTE 

derest  book,  lies  something  akin  to  hope.  And  so, 
behind  this  book  is  the  wish  that  somewhere  or 
other  there  may  be  a  jaded  teacher  of  English  who 
will  find  in  these  pages  the  seeds  of  a  fresh  outlook 
and  a  new  incentive,  or  a  novice  in  the  profession 
who  will  gather  from  them  an  idea  or  two  to  help 
him  on  his  way. 

L. 
St.  Mary's  College, 

Oakland,  California. 
May  15,  1921. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.     MATTER,  MANNER  AND  MOOD      .      .  I 

II.     THE  VITAL  APPRECIATION  OF  LITERA- 
TURE       9 

III.  MATTER  IN  THE  DRAMA     ....  18 

IV.  MATTER  IN  THE  ESSAY 27 

V.     MANNER  IN  THE  DRAMA    ....  34 

VI.     MANNER  IN  THE  ESSAY     ....  43 

VII.    MOOD  IN  THE  DRAMA 53 

VIII.     MOOD  IN  THE  ESSAY 62 

IX.     SOME  PRINCIPLES  IN  THE  TEACHING 

OF  LITERATURE 71 


2  TEACHING  THE  DRAMA   AND   THE   ESSAY 

Said  the  second :  "I  noticed  that  any  place  in  the 
mountains  will  not  do  for  a  mine.  The  prospectors 
have  certain  rules  for  discovering  a  good  place,  and 
they  take  samples  of  ore  and  send  it  to  experts 
to  be  analyzed.  Then  there  is  a  certain  way  in  which 
the  miners  must  start  operations,  and  they  con- 
struct the  mine  by  digging  along  a  ledge  and  prop- 
ping up  the  tunnel  with  wooden  beams." 

Said  the  third:  "One  of  the  men  gave  me  these 
nuggets  and  this  little  bag  of  gold  dust.  These  parts 
of  the  nugget  aren't  of  much  use,  but  I  had  to  take 
them,  of  course,  because  otherwise  I  couldn't  have 
these  parts,  the  real  gold.  One  of  the  nuggets  I 
am  going  to  keep  as  a  souvenir,  just  as  it  is;  the 
other  I  am  going  to  bring  to  the  jeweler  to  have 
him  make  a  pair  of  earrings  for  my  mother;  and 
the  gold  dust  I  am  going  to  bring  down  to  the  mint 
to  see  how  much  money  I  can  get  for  it." 

The  fourth  pupil  was  silent  for  a  little  while ;  but, 
when  urged  by  the  teacher  to  tell  what  he  had 
learned,  he  answered  simply:  "I  had  a  long  talk 
with  the  jolly  miner  who  has  been  all  over  the 
world;  and  I  think  I  understand  just  how  they  mine 
gold;  and  I  have  two  nuggets  and  a  bag  of  gold 
dust,  too." 

Let  us  substitute  a  literary  mine — any  one  of  the 
world's  immortal  books — for  the  gold  mine  of  our 
allegory,  and  then  we  shall  see  clearly  enough  that 
the  first  boy  was  interested  in  the  mood,  the  second 
in  the  manner,  the  third  in  the  matter;  and  that  the 


MATTER,    MANNER  AND    MOOD  3 

fourth,  who  was  unquestionably  the  finest  type  of 
student,  was  interested  in  all  three. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  matter,  the  study  of 
literature  is  a  dubious  success  unless  the  student  has 
something  tangible  to  show  for  his  work,  unless,  so 
to  say,  he  has  brought  away  with  him  some  of  the 
gold  dust  of  inspiration  and  a  nugget  or  two  of 
information.  We  are  to  gain  from  our  study  of 
books  something  besides  impressions  of  the  author's 
mood  and  personality,  something  besides  a  percep- 
tion of  how  he  works  and  what  tools  he  uses.  We 
must  likewise  gain  knowledge,  knowledge  in  the 
nugget  form  of  fact,  and  knowledge  in  the  dust  form 
of  truth. 

Some  of  the  information  that  we  get  from  litera- 
ture we  may  profitably  use  to  adorn  our  minds  as 
the  third  boy  purposed  to  employ  the  souvenir  nug- 
get. A  knowledge  of  certain  facts,  we  cheerfully 
grant,  is  largely  ornamental ;  yet  the  ornamental  has 
its  place  in  art  and  in  life,  and  some  of  us  would  be 
appreciably  better  off  if  we  had  sooner  learned  the 
wisdom  of  devoting  a  measure  of  time  and  effort 
to  the  acquisition  of  what  very  erudite  gentlemen 
tolerantly  designate  as  the  minor  arts  and  graces. 
It  is  perfectly  true  that  a  man  may  live  in  a  house 
utterly  destitute  of  pictures,  tapestries,  marbles  and 
bric-a-brac,  just  as  the  Puritans  may  have  said 
their  prayers  in  bare  and  whitewashed  churches, 
but  he  will  be  happier  in  his  leisure  hours  and  richer 
in  his  manner  of  life  if  he  gathers  about  him  me- 


4  TEACHING  THE  DRAMA   AND   THE   ESSAY 

mentoes  of  his  travels  and  souvenirs  of  the  joys 
and  sorrows  of  his  early  years.  God  has  blessed 
youth  with  a  memory  quick  and  retentive  that  youth 
may  garner  from  books  and  life  ornaments  of 
thought  destined  to  prove  sources  of  solace  and  re- 
freshment in  the  years  to  come. 

"I  don't  read  books,"  said  a  vigorous  business 
man  one  day.  "I  don't  need  books;  and,  anyhow, 
I  haven't  time."  "Poor  fellow!"  murmured  a 
philosopher  who  chanced  to  overhear  the  remark. 
"What  a  dismal  old  age  you  are  going  to  have !" 

And  I  think  the  philosopher  was  right.  For  there 
will  come  a  time  in  the  life  of  the  vigorous  business 
man  when  he  will  be  no  longer  vigorous,  when  the 
cares  and  delights  of  his  active  career  will  have  been 
taken  up  by  younger  hands ;  and  then,  if  he  delight 
not  in  books,  if  his  mind  be  like  a  room  uncarpeted 
and  unadorned — God  pity  him! 

But  the  information  we  get  from  literature  is  not 
all  ornamental ;  much  of  it,  perhaps  the  better  part 
of  it,  resembles  the  nugget  which  the  boy  was  going 
to  have  wrought  into  jewelry.  We  are  all  jewelers 
in  this  little  human  life  of  ours;  and  if  we  are 
honest  men  and  discriminating  we  prefer  to  work 
on  real  gold  rather  than  on  pinchbeck.  Now  the 
real  gold  of  life  and  art  we  can  find  in  abundance 
in  the  works  of  the  great  poets  and  story-tellers, 
dramatists  and  essayists.  We  must  dig  for  it,  as 
Ruskin  wisely  warns  us,  but  it  is  there.  But  it  does 
not  come  out  in  finished  form.  What  we  can  get 


MATTER,    MANNER   AND    MOOD  5 

from  even  the  greatest  writer  is  but  the  ore,  a  hand- 
ful of  nuggets  now  and  then;  and  we  must  labor 
over  it  in  the  smelter  of  our  meditation  and  fashion 
it  to  our  liking  with  the  file  of  our  common  sense 
and  the  hammer  of  our  enlightened  will.  Then, 
truly,  like  the  boy  who  wanted  to  give  a  pair  of  ear- 
rings to  his  mother,  may  we  minister  soundly  and 
fruitfully  to  the  follow  creatures  who  come  within 
the  sphere  of  our  influence. 

Not  only  information  constitutes  the  matter  of 
literary  study.  A  yet  more  important  yield  of  the 
literary  mine  is  inspiration.  We  cannot  get  far,  in 
letters  or  in  life,  without  it ;  for  if  information  is  the 
steam  engine,  inspiration  is  the  steam.  Inspiration, 
though  tangent  on  mood  and  manner,  is  more  ex- 
tensive than  either ;  it  implies  more  than  the  pleasure 
of  sharing  a  writer's  mood,  more  than  the  aesthetic 
satisfaction  of  seeing  how  a  work  of  art  is  put  to- 
gether. Inspiration  is  based  on  knowledge,  vital 
knowledge ;  and  it  furnishes  us  with  refreshment 
and  encouragement  and  light.  It  is  the  greatest 
thing,  the  finest  thing,  that  books — real  books — can 
give  us. 

Years  ago  I  knew  a  teacher  who  from  many  points 
of  view  might  be  regarded  as  a  burdened,  a  disap- 
pointed, a  disillusioned  man.  Humanly  speaking, 
he  was  a  failure.  His  health  was  shattered,  his  re- 
lations with  his  superiors  were  strained,  his  in- 
fluence in  his  classroom  was  nugatory.  Had  he 
been  unconscious  of  all  this  his  case  would  not  have 


6  TEACHING  THE   DRAMA   AND   THE   ESSAY 

been  in  the  least  tragical,  for  he  could  then  have 
done  what  many  unconscious  failures  do — live  in  a 
fool's  paradise  of  unwitting  delusion  and  self-satis- 
fied pretense.  But  he  knew  he  was  a  failure;  a 
failure  more  complete  than  the  little  world  about 
him  could  perceive,  for  during  many  months  even 
the  heavens  were  as  brass  to  his  prayers  and  the 
consolations  of  the  spiritual  life  were  denied  him. 
He  rose  ultimately  from  his  mound  of  sorrow  and, 
like  holy  Job,  enjoyed  presently  the  fruits  natural 
and  supernatural  of  his  patient  efforts.  But  what 
was  it  that  had  aided  him  to  pass  through  that 
somber  valley  and  mount  the  steep  ascent  that  led 
him  to  sunshine  and  to  peace? 

It  was  the  inspiration  he  discovered  in  great 
books.  Nerve-wracked  in  body  and  inexpressibly 
weary  in  soul,  he  would  drag  himself  from  his  ardu- 
ous and  apparently  futile  classroom  duties,  fling  him- 
self into  a  chair  by  the  open  window  and  spend  an 
hour  in  exalted  communion  with  one  of  the  royal 
aristocracy  of  letters.  He  was  no  linguist  and  dis- 
liked translations,  so  many  world  masterpieces  were 
closed  books  to  him;  but  in  English  he  covered  a 
wide  range,  reading  with  little  system  but  with  great 
absorption  Newman,  Carlyle,  Coleridge,  Goldsmith, 
Tennyson,  Keats ;  breasting  the  bitter  but  purifying 
current  of  Shakespeare's  tragedies,  unravelling  the 
skein  of  life  so  dexterously  fashioned  by  Dickens 
and  Thackeray.  And  every  day,  when  the  com- 
munity bell  called  him  to  community  duties,  he  arose 


MATTER,    MANNER   AND   MOOD  7 

renewed,  refreshed,  reinvigorated  in  body  and  in 
mind.  For  every  day  his  hour  of  reading  had  fur- 
nished the  armory  of  his  spirit  with  a  new  set  of 
weapons  for  his  grilling  warfare;  every  day  from 
the  exhaustless  mine  of  literature  he  came  forth 
holding  tightly  in  his  hands  a  bag  of  gold  dust  of 
inspiration.  And  day  by  day  was  his  spirit  chas- 
tened and  his  outlook  widened  and  his  heart  en- 
larged ;  and  he  saw  God  and  himself  and  his  fellow 
men  in  an  altered  and  a  clearer  light ;  and  when  the 
hour  of  his  trial  was  over  and  the  shadows  lifted 
and  his  liberation  was  at  hand,  he  stepped  forth  to 
meet  the  old  vexations  with  the  insight  and  courage 
of  a  new  man. 

That  man  was  no  scholar  and  no  genius;  yet  he 
learned  the  secret  of  fruitful  literary  study.  He 
fell  a  willing  victim  to  the  witchery  of  artistic  struc- 
ture, and  from  the  contemplation  of  the  formal 
excellence  of  the  books  he  read  he  developed  in 
his  own  mental  processes  and  in  his  own  view  of 
life  a  sense  of  clearness  and  variety,  symmetry  and 
proportion.  He  lost  his  own  troubles  and  discord- 
ances for  the  moment  to  share  the  varying  moods 
of  the  authors  he  read  and  thus  learned  some  of  the 
secrets  of  what  is  called  style.  And,  most  important 
of  all,  he  accepted  the  books  before  him  as  vital 
things,  as  portraits  of  life,  commentaries  on  life, 
interpretations  of  life;  and  hence  came  to  him  the 
fine  fruits  of  understanding  and  sympathy,  wisdom 


8  TEACHING   THE   DRAMA   AND   THE   ESSAY 

and  realization,  enlightenment  of  mind  and  libera- 
tion of  spirit. 

Yes,  he  learned  the  secret  of  literary  study.  For 
literary  study  concerns  itself  with  those  three 
things :  The  relation  of  books  to  life,  which  is  the 
matter  of  literature  and  the  basis  of  vital  literary 
study;  the  structure,  the  technique,  of  books,  which 
is  the  manner  of  literature  and  the  basis  of  formal 
literary  study;  and  the  personality  of  books,  which 
is  the  mood  of  literature  and  the  basis  of  (esthetic 
literary  study.  For  the  appreciation  of  literature 
is  aesthetic,  formal  and  vital,  these  three;  and  the 
greatest  of  these  is  the  vital. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  VITAL  APPRECIATION  OF  LITERATURE 

THE  right  teaching  of  a  literary  masterpiece  is 
fundamentally  and  essentially  a  process  of  appre- 
ciation. The  book  we  are  teaching  has  some  ex- 
cellence and  we  want  our  pupils  to  realize  that 
excellence.  We  may  tell  them  interesting  facts 
about  the  author,  we  may  read  them  comments  by 
distinguished  critics,  we  may  have  them  study  the 
historical  and  social  background  of  the  book.  But 
all  these  things,  and  many  other  such  things,  are 
secondary;  were  we  to  stop  here,  we  should  fall 
into  the  error  of  the  old-fashioned  manual  of  litera- 
ture and  let  the  pupils  know  everything  about  a 
writer  except  the  things  he  wrote.  Our  conscious 
and  directing  purpose  is  to  lead  our  pupils  to  appre- 
ciate the  book. 

We  distinguish  three  kinds  of  appreciation — 
formal,  aesthetic  and  vital.  Formal  appreciation 
concerns  itself  with  the  make-up  of  the  masterpiece, 
with  the  materials  used,  the  workmanship  of  the 
author.  It  covers  all  the  ground  of  grammar  and 
much  of  the  field  of  rhetoric.  Are  the  sentences 
long  or  short,  declarative  or  interrogative,  periodic, 
loose  or  balanced?  Are  the  words  in  national,  re- 

9 


IO        TEACHING   THE   DRAMA   AND   THE   ESSAY 

putable  and  present  use?  Has  the  book  structure 
— a  beginning,  a  middle  and  an  end?  Such  ques- 
tions deal  with  details  of  formal  appreciation. 

.^Esthetic  appreciation  pertains  to  style.  It  formu- 
lates the  generally  accepted  qualities  of  style — • 
such  as  conciseness,  ornateness,  vigor,  clearness, 
urbanity — and  studies  the  book  from  that  point  of 
view.  Is  the  author  graceful  in  thought  and  ex- 
pression? Is  he  suggestive  in  his  narrative  and 
descriptive  passages?  Does  he  manifest  sublimity, 
humor,  pathos?  Is  his  work  mainly  dramatic  or 
mainly  pictorial?  And  how,  in  these  things,  does 
this  book  compare  with  books  previously  read? 
Such  questions  deal  with  details  of  aesthetic  appre- 
ciation. 

Vital  appreciation,  as  the  adjective  indicates, 
dwells  upon  the  book  in  its  relation  to  human  life. 
It  considers  the  characters  in  the  book  as  live 
human  beings,  the  settings  of  the  book  as  a  real 
human  background,  the  plot  of  the  book  as  the 
crossing  and  re-crossing  of  human  motives  and 
human  plans.  It  is  on  the  lookout  for  commentaries 
on  life  and  on  living,  and  such  commentaries  it  in- 
vestigates in  the  light  of  ethical  teaching  and  per- 
sonal experience.  Do  men  and  women  say  such 
things  and  do  such  things  in  actual  life?  Do  the 
characters  in  the  book  remind  me  of  any  of  my 
acquaintances?  Do  some  of  the  comments  of  the 
author  apply  especially  to  my  life  and  my  problems? 
What  has  the  reading  of  this  book  taught  me  con- 


THE   VITAL   APPRECIATION    OF   LITERATURE        II 

cerning  God  and  my  fellow  man  and  myself  ?  Such 
questions  deal  with  details  of  vital  appreciation. 

When  we  consider  how  literature  is  generally 
taught  and  how  teachers'  handbooks  maintain  that 
it  ought  to  be  taught,  we  find  that  the  value  of 
aesthetic  appreciation  is  recognized,  that  the  value 
of  formal  appreciation  is  over-emphasized,  that  the 
value  of  vital  appreciation  is  either  inadequately  per- 
ceived or  absolutely  ignored.  The  children  are  en- 
couraged to  study  the  meaning  and  derivation  of 
words,  to  point  out  figures  of  speech,  to  analyze 
the  structure  of  episodes;  but,  generally  speaking, 
it  would  seem  to  be  true  that  they  are  not  encouraged 
to  regard  literature  as  a  portrait  and  interpretation 
of  life.  "Even  the  best  editions  of  our  day,"  writes 
the  late  George  Gissing  in  "The  Private  Papers  of 
Henry  Ryecroft,"  "have  so  much  of  the  mere  school- 
book  ;  you  feel  so  often  that  the  man  does  not  re- 
gard his  author  as  literature,  but  simply  as  a  text." 
This  is  surely  a  mistaken  notion  of  the  function 
and  aims  of  literary  study. 

Another  mistake  into  which  some  pedagogical' 
theorists  fall  is  the  assumption  that  these  three  sorts 
of  appreciation  are  arranged  in  a  terrace ;  that  there 
can  be  no  aesthetic  appreciation  until  the  formal 
appreciation  has  been  completed,  and  that  there  can 
be  no  vital  appreciation  until  the  pupils  have  mas- 
tered the  aesthetic  aspects  of  the  work  studied.  It 
has  even  been  said  that  the  study  of  literature  should 
be  exclusively  formal  in  the  grades,  exclusively 


12        TEACHING   THE   DRAMA   AND   THE   ESSAY 

aesthetic  in  the  high  school  and  exclusively  vital 
in  the  college;  that  first  should  come  the  "drill" 
period,  next  the  "syntax"  period  and  finally  the 
period  of  appreciation  of  the  book  as  a  contribution 
to  one's  philosophy  of  life. 

It  cannot  be  too  vigorously  pointed  out  that  such 
a  conception  of  pedagogical  procedure  possesses 
but  one  merit  and  that  a  dubious  one,  namely, 
mechanical  symmetry.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  there 
is  room  for  all  three  kinds  of  appreciation  in  every 
school  grade;  all  three  of  them  should  come  into 
play  in  the  teaching  of  every  piece  of  literature ;  and, 
alike  in  the  primary  class  and  in  the  senior  year  of 
college,  most  stress  should  be  placed  on  vital  appre- 
ciation, less  stress  on  aesthetic  appreciation  and 
least  stress  on  formal  appreciation.  The  great,  the 
tragic  error  of  much  college  teaching  today — a 
heritage  in  part  derived  from  the  study  of  the 
ancient  languages  and  in  part  from  the  methods  in 
vogue  in  the  German  universities — is  to  make  true 
appreciation  of  literature  as  an  art  degenerate  into 
the  study  of  philology  as  a  science.  "How  could 
it  be  otherwise/'  asks  Dr.  O'Hagan,  in  his  essay 
on  "The  Degradation  of  Scholarship,"  "when  pe- 
dantry with  all  its  assumption  and  presumption 
usurps  the  throne  of  scholarship,  and  true  culture 
often  finds  but  little  welcome  in  the  classrooms  and 
academic  halls  of  our  land?" 

The  over-emphasis  on  the  formal  and  aesthetic 
aspects  of  literary  study  to  the  exclusion  of  essential 


THE  VITAL   APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE         13 

vital  appreciation  is  happily  indicated  by  the  Rev- 
erend Edward  F.  Garesche,  S.  J.,  in  his  Catholic 
School  Journal  article  on  "The  Training  of 
Writers":  "It  is  rather  amusing  in  the  retrospect 
to  see  how  in  the  lives  of  successful  authors  their 
school  work  in  English  has  sometimes  played  a  neg- 
ligible part  in  their  training  for  writing  because 
they  detested  grammar  and  hated  rhetoric  and  be- 
cause sometimes  the  models  presented  for  them  for 
study  in  the  classroom  were  so  dissected  and 
anatomized  that  they  lost  every  semblance  of  the 
fair  and  living  form  of  literature." 

The  study  of  literature  will  be-  a  fair  and  living 
thing  only  when  it  consists  mainly  of  vital  appre- 
ciation. And  vital  appreciation  can  exist  only  when 
both  teacher  and  pupils  possess  the  feelings  for 
literature,  when  they  realize  that  books  are  human 
documents,  filled  with  wisdom  human  and  divine, 
abounding  with  portraits  of  men  and  movements, 
embodiments  of  human  thought  and  human  passion, 
things  palpitating  and  athrill  with  human  strivings 
and  human  speech. 

The  right  attitude  toward  the  great  books  of  the 
world  is  suggested  to  the  teacher  by  the  Catholic 
poet,  Aubrey  de  Vere,  in  his  introduction  to  "Selec- 
tions from  the  Poets."  He  quotes  Bacon's  sig- 
nificant saying  that  "it  is  the  office  of  poetry  to 
submit  the  shows  of  things  to  the  desires  of  the 
mind" ;  and  he  amplifies  the  thought  as  follows :  __J 

"Meaning  by  the  mind,  the  aspirations  of  that 


14        TEACHING  THE  DRAMA  AND  THE  ESSAY 

mens  melior,  or  noble  mind,  which  is  the  part  of 
man  that  retains  the  image  of  God  and  thirsts  for 
immortality.  The  world  of  sense,  since  the  fall, 
has  lost  the  glory  of  that  light  which  dwelt  upon 
its  countenance  as  it  was  first  created.  In  poetry 
a  portion  of  that  light  is  restored ;  for  poetry  is  an 
ideal  art,  which  invests  objects  with  a  grandeur, 
a  freedom,  and  a  purity  not  their  own.  When  we 
speak  of  'poetic  Justice/  we  refer  to  the  fact  that 
in  poetry  we  require  a  justice  more  palpable  and 
swift  than  that  which  the  eye  discerns  in  the  course 
of  actual  events.  When  we  speak  of  poetic  Truth, 
we  refer  to  a  truth  essential  and  universal,  and  free 
from  the  accidents  to  which  the  detail  of  common 
things  is,  in  appearance  at  least,  subjected.  Not  less 
sacred  is  that  Beauty  of  which  the  poets  in  every 
age  have  sung.  It  is  nothing  merely  material,  al- 
though it  manifests  itself  in  material  things.  From 
them  it  looks  forth,  as  the  soul  looks  forth  from  the 
face." 

What  de  Vere  says  specifically  of  poetry  applies 
equally  to  all  great  literature,  to  dramas  and  novels 
and  essays.  All  great  books  are  transcripts  of 
human  life.  They  purge  life  of  its  superfluities 
and  non-essentials,  they  compress  it  in  point  of  time 
and  focus  interest  on  its  significant  conditions  and 
qualities.  To  read  Tennyson's  "Morte  d'Arthur," 
for  example,  is  to  concentrate  upon  certain  phases 
of  human  experience,  actual  or  potential ;  to  under- 
stand the  feeling  of  emptiness  and  impotence  that 


THE  VITAL  APPRECIATION   OF  LITERATURE        1$ 

comes  after  even  mighty  achievements,  to  feel  the 
weariness  that  follows  defeat,  to  realize  that  faith 
and  faith  alone  can  sustain  a  man  in  the  great  crises 
of  life. 

And  so  it  comes  to  pass  that  great  books  impart 
a  knowledge  of  human  nature — general  and  par- 
ticular. They  teach  us  to  know  man  and  to  know 
men.  How  one  grows  in  spiritual  and  intellectual 
stature  as  he  reads  Macaulay's  essay  on  Milton ! 
He  discovers  that  Cavalier  and  Puritan  are  not 
merely  two  figures  in  English  history  but  that  they 
are  two  eternal  human  types,  and  that  he  himself 
approximates  to  one  or  the  other -and  possesses  cor- 
responding advantages  and  defects.  He  sees  now 
as  never  before  that  loyalty  is  sometimes  unright- 
eous and  that  righteousness  is  sometimes  disloyal; 
that  the  good  man  finds  it  hard  to  be  a  tolerant 
man,  and  that  the  man  who  puts  not  virtue  in  the 
first  place  will  be  ultimately  overcome.  And  the 
great  blind  poet,  hitherto  an  abstraction,  becomes 
real  to  him,  and  like  himself  a  child  of  Heaven  and 
a  child  of  sin,  like  himself  the  victim  of  pain  and 
penury  and  circumstance,  like  himself  tormented 
by  unrealized  ideals  and  the  agony  of  unrest.  And 
all  this  and  ever  so  much  more,  be  it  remarked  in 
passing,  one  may  secure  from  the  essay  without  so 
much  as  suspecting  that  Macaulay  wrote  balanced 
sentences. 

The  vital  study  of  literature  appreciates  great 
books  as  veritable  treasure  hoards  of  wisdom.  In 


l6        TEACHING  THE  DRAMA   AND   THE   ESSAY 

Shakespeare's  "As  You  Like  It"  even  Touchstone's 
foolish  fancies  are  singularly  wise.  "Ay,"  cries 
the  philosophic  man  of  motley,  "now  am  I  in  Arden ; 
the  more  fool  I;  when  I  was  at  home  I  was  in  a 
better  place :  but  travellers  must  be  content."  What 
a  world  of  suffering  might  not  we  all  be  spared — 
suffering,  too,  that  hath  no  relish  of  salvation  in  it 
— if  we  could  only  realize  that  we  have  not  here 
a  lasting  city,  that  no  matter  whither  we  go  or 
what  we  undertake  we  are  bound  to  find  annoy- 
ances and  inconveniences,  suspicion  and  ingratitude ! 
Verily,  travellers  must  be  content !  Content  to  take 
fair  days  and  foul  even  as  they  come,  to  see  the 
best  there  is  to  see  in  forest  flirts  and  banished 
dukes,  to  read  complacently  both  the  leaves  of  the 
forest  and  the  leaves  of  the  Book  of  Life — "whose 
pages,"  says  Jeffery  Farnol,  "are  forever  a-turning, 
wherein  are  marvels  and  wonders  undreamed; 
things  to  weep  over,  and  some  few  to  laugh  at,  if  one 
has  but  eyes  in  one's  head  to  see  withal." 

And  great  books  somehow  seem  to  grow  with  our 
growth.  Dante  means  more  to  us  today  than  he 
did  ten  years  ago,  and  ten  years  hence  he  will  be 
more  potent  still.  Our  reading  acts  upon  our  living 
and  our  living  reacts  upon  the  books  we  love;  and 
age  cannot  wither  them  nor  custom  stale  their  in- 
finite variety.  It  is  as  though  every  year  another 
candle  were  lighted,  an  added  illumination  thrown 
upon  the  familiar  printed  page ;  and  as  we  read,  lo, 
new  visions  of  life  arise  before  us,  new  insights 


THE   VITAL   APPRECIATION    OF   LITERATURE        17 

come  to  caution  and  to  guide,  new  moods  give  zest 
to  living  and  to  labor  and  we  lay  us  down  anew  to 
pleasant  dreams. 

Vital  appreciation  means  religious  appreciation; 
for  God  speaks  to  us  in  the  world's  great  books.  If 
we  study  them  exclusively  as  grammarians  or 
philologists  or  rhetoricians,  I  fail  to  understand 
how  we  can  hear  in  them  His  voice ;  but  once  we 
take  them  up  as  fragrant  human  documents  the 
heavens  truly  lie  about  us  for  we  begin  to  perceive 
somewhat  of  the  ways  of  God  with  men.  The  old 
belief  that  poets  were  possessed  of  wise  and  friendly 
spirits  who  spoke  in  them  and  through  them  is  not 
an  idle  fancy,  for  in  our  best  moments  and  in  our 
best  work  it  is  God's  artistry  that  is  wrought.  Re- 
flections of  His  Infinite  Goodness  and  Truth  and 
Beauty  are  caught  in  literature  and  garnered  for 
the  children  of  today  and  tomorrow;  and  surely, 
if  the  Catholic  school  is  to  live  up  to  its  mission  and 
its  ideal,  it  is  right  and  necessary  that  its  pupils 
learn  to  read  those  books  with  open  minds  and 
hearts. 


CHAPTER  III 

MATTER    IN    THE    DRAMA 

THE  objective  of  the  vital  study  of  literature  is 
to  realize  the  truth  of  the  definition  of  art  as  a 
picture  and  an  interpretation  of  human  life;  to 
secure  increased  knowledge  of  and  sympathy  with 
our  fellow  men ;  to  learn  more  about  ourselves, 
our  tendencies,  our  prospects,  our  environment,  our 
potentialities ;  to  grasp  a  little  better  some  concep- 
tion of  God's  plan  in  dealing  with  man  and  with 
men. 

So  much  for  theory.  Now,  let  us  apply  the 
theory  of  vital  appreciation  to  Shakespeare's  "Julrus 
Caesar,"  select  certain  aspects  of  the  drama  sus- 
ceptible of  correlation  with  human  life  as  we  see 
it  and  know  it,  and  frame  a  few  suggestions  regard- 
ing the  study  of  the  play  from  the  point  of  view  of 
matter. 

Like  unto  Us.  Despite  the  fact  that  this  play 
was  written  more  than  three  hundred  years  ago 
about  people  who  lived  more  than  two  thousand 
years  ago,  it  is  distinctly  up-to-date.  Fashions  in 
clothes  have  changed,  and  social  customs  may 
have  varied  somewhat,  and  methods  of  warfare 
have  grown  more  death-dealing  and  intensive,  but 


MATTER   IN   THE  DRAMA  IQ 

in  every  essential — and  in  very  many  non-essentials 
—life  is  much  the  same  in  the  play  as  in  our  own 
day  and  place  and  generation.  Then  as  now  the 
game  of  politics  consisted  largely  in  plotting  to 
overthrow  a  ruler  on  the  pretext  that  he  had  taken 
too  much  power  unto  himself.  Then  as  now  con- 
spiracy thrived  best  in  the  dark,  and  yet  news  of  it 
managed  to  leak  out.  Then  as  now  mobs  were 
swung  hither  and  yon  by  means  of  appeals  to  their 
emotions — then  by  orations,  now  by  newspapers. 
Then  as  now  grave  misunderstandings  arose  be- 
tween friends  and  brothers-in-arms.  Then  as  now 
great  men  like  Caesar  and  Brutus  were  most  appre- 
ciated after  they  were  dead. 

Idealist  and  Politician.  Dozens  of  men  like 
Brutus  and  Cassius  walk  our  streets  today.  The 
Brutus  sort  are  idealists ;  the  Cassius  sort  are  politi- 
cians. Brutus  has  exalted  motives  in  joining  the 
conspiracy;  he  is  a  philosopher  and  a  patriot  and 
is  remarkably  disinterested.  Cassius  organizes  the 
cabal  against  Caesar  mainly  because  of  his  personal 
antipathy  for  Caesar;  he  is  plainly  an  opportunist, 
intent  ever  on  the  main  chance.  Brutus  loves  Rome 
more;  Cassius  loves  Cassius  more.  Of  the  two 
Brutus  is  by  far  the  nobler  man. 

And  yet,  in  the  practical  affairs  of  life,  in  the  de- 
tails of  daily  conduct,  it  is  Cassius  who  possesses 
the  greater  share  of  pragmatic  wisdom.  Every  time 
there  is  a  difference  of  opinion  between  Brutus  and 
Cassius,  Brutus  is  noble  and  Cassius  is  right.  Thus 


2O        TEACHING   THE  DRAMA   AND   THE   ESSAY 

Cassius  wants  to  do  away  with  Antony  on  the  ides 
of  March,  while  Brutus  opposes  such  a  course  as 
ruthless  and  sanguinary;  yet  allowing  Antony  to 
live  proves  the  ultimate  undoing  of  the  conspirators. 
Again,  when  Brutus  consents,  most  cordially  and 
generously,  to  allow  Antony  to  deliver  Caesar's 
funeral  oration,  Cassius  foresees  the  results  and 
vigorously  expostulates.  As  usual,  he  is  overruled; 
and,  as  usual,  he  is  right.  Being  a  practical  politi- 
cian, Cassius  has  a  salutary  distrust  of  his  own 
powers;  being  an  idealist,  Brutus  takes  it  for 
granted  that  once  he,  Brutus,  has  addressed  the  mul- 
titude, no  harm  can  be  done  by  Antony.  He  is  like 
the  teacher  who  had  occasion  to  leave  his  class  and 
was  told  that  his  youthful  charges  were  playing 
riotously.  "Impossible,"  he  said  calmly  "Before 
leaving,  I  told  them  to  remain  perfectly  quiet." 

The  intimacy  between  these  two  men  brings  out 
another  important  truth :  If  the  bad  affects  the 
good,  the  good  also  affects  the  bad.  Cassius  leads 
Brutus  into  the  conspiracy  and  to  eventual  ruin; 
but  Brutus  makes  Cassius  a  bigger  and  a  nobler 
man.  If  we  compare  the  Cassius  of  the  first  act — 
the  unscrupulous,  time-serving,  sneering,  scheming 
politician — with  the  Cassius  of  the  last  act  who 
speaks  not  unworthily  of  life  and  duty  and  goes  to 
his  death  with  something  akin  to  grandeur,  we  shall 
perceive  how  contact  with  a  noble  mind  begets 
nobility. 

The  fact  that  Brutus  and  Cassius,  defeated  in 


MATTER   IN   THE  DRAMA  21 

their  aspirations,  seek  surcease  in  self-destruction  is 
a  striking  example  of  whither  leads  the  ambition 
that  is  not  based  on  spiritual  motives.  They  were 
not  Christians,  they  knew  naught  of  Our  Lord's 
teaching  and  example;  and  so  on  the  field  of 
Philippi  they  did  that  which,  from  their  pagan  view- 
point, was  really  the  only  consistent  thing  to  do. 
Theoretical  ethics  may  prove  to  us  very  conclusively 
that  suicide  is  cowardly  and  illogical ;  but  in  a  prac- 
tical issue — when  he  faces  a  situation  that  seems 
hopeless — the  man  who  acts  from  purely  natural 
motives  takes  refuge  in  self-destruction.  Brutus 
can  theorize  about  the  evil  of  suicide  as  well  as  any 
one: 

"I  do  find  it  cowardly  and  vile, 
For  fear  of  what  might  fall,  so  to  prevent 
The  time  of  life." 

But  almost  in  the  same  breath,  when  facing  the 
prospect  of  being  dragged  in  disgraceful  chains 
through  the  streets  of  Rome,  Brutus  announces  his 
determination  to  fall  by  his  own  hand  rather  than 
suffer  so  great  an  indignity: 

"No,  Cassius,  no;  think  not,  thou  noble  Roman, 
That  ever  Brutus  will  go  bound  to  Rome; 
He  bears  too  great  a  mind." 

In  literature  as  in  life  the  man  who  kills  himself 
is  the  man  who  has  not  known  God  or  who  has 
turned  away  from  God ;  to  lean  upon  human  motives 
merely  is  to  lean  upon  a  supple  reed. 


22        TEACHING  THE  DRAMA   AND   THE  ESSAY 

Arrested  Development.  Were  we  to  know 
nothing  of  Julius  Caesar  save  what  we  learn  about 
him  in  this  play  we  should  be  loath  to  consider  him 
a  great  man.  We  find  him  here  insufferably  vain 
and  pompous  and  opinionated,  extremely  stubborn 
in  little  things,  changing  his  mind  over  and  over 
again  and  then  prating  about  his  polar  star  con- 
stancy. Can  this  be  the  man  who  in  point  of  fact 
won  so  many  victories  on  the  field  and  in  the  forum 
and  who  left  the  impress  of  his  personality  on  the 
greatest  empire  the  world  has  seen?  Is  Shake- 
speare attempting  to  caricature  an  immortal?  If 
this  be  Caesar,  what  is  the  matter  with  him? 

Caesar,  as  Shakespeare  conceives  him,  is  a  most 
fascinating  study  in  arrested  development.  He  has 
achieved  supreme  power  in  the  Roman  state;  he 
has  defeated  his  formidable  rival,  Pompey;  he  is 
in  fact,  if  not  in  name,  a  king.  And  he  rests  on 
his  laurels;  he  stops  growing.  His  victories  have 
made  him  over-confident,  over-secure;  his  place  in 
the  sun  has  turned  his  head.  And  so  we  find  him 
uttering  such  nonsense  as, 

"danger  knows  full  well 
That  Caesar  is  more  dangerous  than  he: 
We  are  two  lions  litter'd  in  one  day, 
And  I  the  elder  and  more  terrible." 

"Caesar  shall  forth:  the  things  that  threatened  me 
Ne'er  look'd  but  on  my  back;  when  they  shall  see 
The  face  of  Caesar,  they  are  vanished." 

"I  rather  tell  thee  what  is  to  be  fear'd 
Than  what  I  fear;  for  always  I  am  Caesar." 


MATTER   IN   THE  DRAMA  23 

Do  we  not  recognize  a  Caesar  or  two  in  actual 
life?  Are  there  not  men,  risen  to  high  place  in 
civic,  in  academic  or  ecclesiastical  life,  who  have  a 
strikingly  similar  good  conceit  of  themselves? 
Earlier  in  their  careers  they  were  sane  and  steady 
and  humble;  they  then  recognized  the  necessity  of 
walking  in  the  ways  of  prudence,  of  not  trusting 
unduly  to  their  powers  and  intuitions ;  and  so  they 
were  successful,  and  so  they  climbed  high.  And 
now,  having  reached  the  goal  of  their  endeavors, 
they  become  vain  and  childish  and  self-sufficient ; 
they  hunger  after  fawning  and  flattery;  they  de- 
velop numerous  pettish  whims  and  eccentricities; 
and  their  guiding  principle  is  not,  "Non  nobis 
Domine,  non  nobis,"  but  "always  I  am  Caesar !" 

The  Secret  of  Oratory.  It  is  not  without  in- 
terest to  draw  a  few  comparisons  between  the 
speech  of  Brutus  and  the  oration  of  Antony. 
Brutus  makes  absolutely  no  appeal  to  the  emotions 
of  his  auditors;  Antony  appeals  to  nothing  else, 
though  in  places  he  makes  an  elaborate  pretense  of 
"reasoning  with"  the  citizens.  As  Le  Bon  has  ad- 
mirably pointed  out  in  his  "Psychology  of  the 
Crowd,"  real  men  in  a  real  mob  are  never  influenced 
by  argument  pure  and  simple.  "Logic,"  says  Car- 
dinal Newman  in  his  "Grammar  of  Assent,"  "makes 
but  a  sorry  rhetoric  with  the  multitude;  first  shoot 
round  corners;  and  you  may  not  despair  of  con- 
verting by  syllogism."  This  Brutus  did  not  know, 


24        TEACHING   THE   DRAMA   AND   THE   ESSAY 

and  he  failed;  this  Antony  did  know,  and  he  suc- 
ceeded. 

Furthermore,  Antony  suits  his  speech  to  the  com- 
prehension of  his  auditors.  Realizing  that  he  is 
not  talking  to  trained  thinkers,  he  is  far  from  being 
logical,  cold  and  formal.  As  he  himself  says,  he 
only  speaks  right  on.  His  is  the  art  that  conceals 
art.  Brutus  makes  use  of  abstract  terms — "love," 
'Valor,"  "ambition,"  "honor,"  "bondman,"  "free- 
man." But  Antony  revels  in  the  concrete,  the 
specific;  he  leaps  down  from  the  pulpit,  holds  aloft 
Caesar's  blood-stained  cloak,  fingers  the  rents  made 
by  the  conspirators'  daggers  and  exhibits  the  gashed 
and  gory  corpse  itself. 

Nor  is  this  all.  Besides  drawing  the  sympathy 
and  compassion  of  his  hearers  to  the  dead  Caesar, 
he  skillfully  plays  upon  their  self-interest  and  their 
self-love;  he  pauses  at  times,  seemingly  overcome 
with  grief,  that  his  words  may  the  better  sink  into 
their  hearts;  he  makes  the  ostensibly  courteous  ex- 
pression, "honorable  man,"  the  vehicle  of  a  subtle 
and  ever  deepening  irony ;  to  whet  the  curiosity  and 
sustain  the  interest  of  his  auditors,  he  delays  the 
reading  of  Caesar's  will.  Despite  his  own  studi- 
ously modest  disavowal  of  the  fact,  Antony  is  an 
accomplished  and  resourceful  orator.  He  has  the 
art  of  talking  down  to  his  audience,  of  observing 
the  effects  of  his  speaking,  of  reading  the  expres- 
sions that  flit  over  the  faces  massed  before  him. 
And  those  men  who,  a  few  moments  earlier,  would 


MATTER   IN    THE   DRAMA  2$ 

scarce  suffer  him  to  mount  the  rostrum,  who  ground 
their  teeth  and  shook  their  fists  and  muttered, 
"  'Twere  best  he  speak  no  harm  of  Brutus  here !" 
—these  men  are  now  to  Antony  as  clay  in  the  pot- 
ter's hand.  And  presently  the  once  "noble  Brutus" 
is  a  murderer  and  a  villain,  those  "honorable  men" 
are  detestable  traitors;  and  Caesar,  the  tyrant,  is 
"royal  Caesar"  and  "most  noble  Caesar." 

The  Art  of  Handling  Men.  Much  practical 
wisdom  is  to  be  found  in  the  way  Cassius — who 
pre-eminently  knows  human  nature — enlists  friends 
and  adherents.  When  he  seeks  to  win  Brutus  over 
to  the  conspiracy  he  talks  much  of  honor  and 
patriotism  and  eloquently  laments  the  passing  of 
the  good  old  times ;  but  the  blunt  and  corpulent 
Casca  he  merely  invites  to  dinner — and  I  am  sure 
that  the  food  was  excellent  and  that  the  feast  was 
not  in  all  respects  in  harmony  with  prohibitionary 
perfection.  He  foresees  things,  too ;  note  how  he 
arranges  to  have  Antony  drawn  away  from  the 
senate  chamber  before  the  assassination.  He  knows 
when  to  apply  the  spur:  "Casca,  be  sudden,  for 
we  fear  prevention."  Later  on  he  strengthens  the 
revolutionary  army  by  spending  money  lavishly. 
Most  important  of  all,  he  knows  when  to  yield  to 
Brutus,  even  though  Brutus  is  less  experienced 
than  he ;  Cassius  is  much  too  skillful  a  leader  of  men 
to  act  on  the  assumption  that  he  is  always  in  the 
right — he  can  on  occasion  give  an  inch  and  take  a 
mile. 


26        TEACHING  THE  DRAMA   AND   THE  ESSAY 

It  would  be  an  easy  thing  to  dwell  more  fully  on 
other  vital  aspects  of  "Julius  Caesar."  Repeated 
readings  of  the.play,  frequent  reconstructions  of  its 
most  striking  scenes,  familiar  intercourse  with  its 
leading  characters,  assiduous  meditation  on  the 
pearls  of  wisdom  with  which  it  abounds,  and,  more 
than  anything  else,  insistent  comparison  of  the  play 
with  the  life  in  us  and  around  us — these  things  will 
bring  us  close  to  the  sources  of  its  power.  The 
tragedy  of  "Julius  Caesar"  possesses  that  one  touch 
of  nature  which  makes  the  whole  world  kin.  This 
it  is  which  verifies  the  prophecy  of  Cassius  when, 
standing  in  the  senate  chamber  over  the  prostrate 
form  of  "the  mightiest  Julius/'  he  waved  his  bloody 
sword  and  cried  in  words  immortal: 

"How  many  ages  hence 
Shall  this  our  lofty  scene  be  acted  o'er 
In  states  unborn  and  accents  yet  unknown!" 


/p*c**2t  f^ 

Q-f-t^1' 


CHAPTER  IV 

MATTER  IN   THE  ESSAY 

WE  conveniently  divide  all  literary  productions 
*nto  four  classes :  The  poem,  the  drama,  the  novel 
and  the  essay.  Of  these  the^ssay  is  at  once  the 
most  varied  and  the  most  inclusive;  in  its  case 
definition  is  all  but  impossible.  Indeed,  for  prac- 
tical purposes  the  friostacceptable  definition  of  the 
essay  ^s  a  s tat emenFof  what  it  is  not,  and  we  may 
truly  say  that  the  essay  is  that  literary  form  which 
is  not  poetry,  drama  or  fiction.  Do  we  take  up  a 
piece  of  literature  which  does  not  square  with  our 
definition  of  the  drama,  the  novel  or  the  poem? 
Then^we  are  justified  in  classifying  it  as  an  essay. 
For  of  all  literary  forms  the  essay  is  the  most-elastic 
Essays  are  Cardinal  Newman's  "Apologia  pro  Vita 
Sua"  and  Brother  Azarias's  "Philosophy  of  Litera- 
ture"; essays  are  Francis  Thompson's  impassioned 
delineation  of  Shelley  and  Charles  Lamb's  disquisi- 
tion on  "Poor  Relations" ;  essays  are  Milton's 
"Tractate  on  Education"  and  Archbishop  Spalding's 
"Opportunity." 

In  the  essay  are  contained  some  of  the  richest 
treasures  of  English  literature,  treasures  which  are 
part  of  the  intellectual  inheritance  of  our  pupils; 

27 


28        TEACHING  THE  DRAMA  AND  THE  ESSAY 

and  it  is  the  duty  of  the  teacher  of  English  to  in- 
troduce our  children  to  this  vast  store  of  culture 
and  learning  and  delight.  The  task  has  special 
difficulties,  the  chief  of  which  is  the  impression 
shared  by  most  young  people  that  the  essay,  even 
at  its  best,  makes  dull  and  dry  reading.  The  average 
child,  once  his  eyes  are  opened  to  the  charm  of 
poetry,  turns  naturally  and  willingly  to  the  treasure- 
trove  of  verse;  once  his  imagination  is  kindled,  he 
finds  stimulating  pleasure  in  studying  the  drama; 
and  as  for  the  novel,  it  is  merely  a  matter  of 
directing  his  taste  toward  the  best,  for  he  revels 
in  prose  fiction.  But  the  essay  sounds  forbidding 
and  looks  austere ;  and  the  first  step  in  its  teaching 
is  to  convey  the  conviction  that,  rightly  understood 
and  rightly  approached,  the  essay  is  a  source  of 
information  and  of  joy. 

How  can  this  be  done?  Mainly  by  contagion 
and  by  example.  Here,  as  in  everything  else,  the 
teacher  will  succeed  in  proportion  as  he  himself 
is  fond  of  essay  reading,  in  proportion  as  he  himself 
knows  the  value  of  communing  with  the  great 
English  essayists,  in  proportion  as  he  himself  turns 
to  the  essay  for  enjoyment  and  refreshment.  Then 
let  him  take  one  of  his  favorite  essays  into  class 
and  read  a  portion  of  it  to  his  pupils,  stopping  now 
and  then  for  a  brief  comment  of  explanation  and 
appreciation.  The  method  is  simple,  almost  ridicu- 
lously simple;  but  it  is  pedagogically  sound  and 
wonderfully  potent.  The  work  of  the  teacher  is 


MATTER   IN   THE   ESSAY  2Q 

more  than  half  done  when  he  has  brought  his  pupils 
to  see  that  wise  men  and  good  men  and  charming 
men  have  enshrined  some  of  their  finest  thoughts 
and  moods  in  the  essay  form. 

"After  all/'  wrote  Mr.  Joseph  Francis  Wickham 
in  America  a  few  years  ago,  "the  essayist  is  very 
akin  to  the  poet,  especially  the  writer  of  the  familiar, 
personal  essay.  For  he  can  put  the  whole  of  this 
little  work  into  his  philosophy,  weaving  the  long 
stretches  of  centuries  into  a  tapestry  full  of  color 
and  glow  and  imagery.  He  can  distil  the  memory 
of  absent  friends,  the  echoes  of  once-heard  voices, 
the  gladness  of  youth,  the  joy  of  sunlight,  the  dis- 
may of  vain  desires,  the  triumph  of  realized  dreams, 
the  glory  of  a  moonlit  sea,  the  grandeur  of  a  snow- 
storm, the  sweetness  of  a  child's  smile,  the  majesty 
of  a  Roman  ruin,  the  thousand,  thousand  realities 
and  recollections  and  visions  that  round  out  our 
lives ;  from  all  this  he  can  win  the  essence,  and  give 
it  to  us  in  an  abiding  fragrance  that  can  comfort 
and  content  and  charm.  We  all  seek  comfort;  we 
all  seek  content;  but  no  less  are  we  ever  on  the 
quest  for  that  elusive  something  known  as  charm. 
We  look  for  it  in  plays,  in  houses,  in  villages,  in 
people,  in  so  many  things  under  the  sun;  and  we 
find  it  in  many  things  if  we  look  long  enough.  If 
we  wish,  and  wish  sincerely  enough,  we  cannot 
miss  a  very  delightful,  perennial  charm  in  the  gentle 
art  of  reading  essays." 

To  every  striving  teacher  of  English  I  urgently 


30        TEACHING  THE  DRAMA  AND  THE  ESSAY 

commend  that  paragraph  for  long  and  fruitful 
meditation.  It  does  not  directly  tell  us  how  to  teach 
the  essay,  but  it  does  something  vastly  more  im- 
portant; it  indicates  the  spirit  in  which  we  should 
do  our  teaching. 

It  is  possible  to  elaborate  a  lengthy  and  complex 
classification  of  essays,  but  for  the  present  pur- 
pose it  should  suffice  to  group  all  essays  into  a 
threefold  division:  Essays  of  interest  chiefly  for 
their  matter;  essays  of  interest  chiefly  for  their 
manner;  and  essays  of  interest  chiefly  for  their 
mood.  And  in  the  study  of  any  particular  essay 
we  have  a  sufficient  basis  for  enlightened  under- 
standing when  we  examine  it  from  those  three  view- 
points of  matter,  manner  and  mood. 

The  study  of  matter  in  the  essay  is  an  applica- 
tion of  the  principle  of  vital  appreciation  in  litera- 
ture. The  essay  gives  us  information,  it  adds 
definitely  to  our  stock  of  knowledge;  it  broadens 
our  view  of  life,  it  widens  our  range  of  sympathies ; 
it  modifies  some  of  our  crude  opinions  and  impres- 
sions, it  puts  familiar  things  in  a  somewhat  unusual 
light ;  it  impresses  us  with  certain  great  truths  which 
heretofore  we  may  have  known  but  never  realized; 
it  teaches  us  some  consoling  and  some  humiliating 
things  about  ourselves  and  about  other  people. 

A  good  example  of  the  essay  of  matter  is 
Ruskin's  "Sesame  and  Lilies."  It  draws  our  atten- 
tion to  the  importance  of  right  reading,  and  it 
awakens  our  interest  in  worthwhile  books.  Be- 


MATTER  IN   THE  ESSAY  31 

sides,  it  gives  us  hints  as  to  the  manner  in  which 
a  book  is  to  be  read  and  warns  us  against  wrong 
methods  of  reading  and  thinking.  Under  the  spell 
of  the  writer's  knowledge  and  style,  we  almost  for- 
get that  we  are  reading  a  printed  page;  rather  it 
seems  that  we  are  sitting  by  the  fire  beside  a  learned 
and  kindly  and  affable  gentleman  who  is  telling 
us,  out  of  the  fulness  of  his  mind  and  heart,  some 
of  the  things  he  has  learned  in  the  course  of  his 
long  experience  with  art  and  life  and  books. 

How  may  we  aid  our  pupils  to  secure  a  grasp 
of  the  matter  of  the  essay?  How  may  we  enable 
them  to  draw  from  it  both  information  and  inspira- 
tion? 

Gaining  information  is  like  shooting  rabbits ;  you 
may  walk  all  day  through  woods  and  fields  with 
never  a  pull  of  the  trigger,  if  you  don't  keep  your 
eyes  open.  Knowledge  comes  to  the  alert.  Listless 
readers  generally  learn  little  or  nothing  from  books 
because  they  are  on  the  alert  for  little  or  nothing. 
Hence,  we  must  teach  the  pupils  to  expect  informa- 
tion. For  this  purpose,  before  they  have  read  the 
essay  at  all,  it  is  well  to  have  them  make,  either 
orally  or  in  tabular  form,  a  brief  statement  of  what 
they  know  on  the  subject  and  of  what  they  expect 
to  discover  in  the  reading  of  the  essay.  It  is  like 
teaching  them  before  prayer  to  prepare  their  souls. 

Again,  encourage  them  to  read  with  pencil  in 
hand.  That  means  to  encourage  the  practice  of 
note-taking — not  the  formal,  ready-made  notes 


32        TEACHING  THE  DRAMA  AND  THE  ESSAY 

written  on  the  blackboard  by  the  teacher  and 
slavishly  copied  by  the  automatic  class — but  those 
spontaneous  notes  which  represent  the  reader's  reac- 
tion to  the  essayist's  stimulus.  Let  them  list  un- 
familiar names,  questionable  opinions,  statements 
of  facts  which  seem  to  be  incorrect  or  misleading, 
expressions  of  heretofore  unrealized  truth.  Let 
them  look  up  references,  run  down  allusions,  even 
now  and  then  verify  quotations;  and  let  the  note- 
books— if  there  be  notebooks — represent  this  indi- 
vidual work. 

And,  provided  it  is  not  overdone,  there  is  value 
I  in  the  practice  of  summarizing  the  essay  by  para- 
l  graphs  and  by  topics.  The  value  inheres  in  the 
device  if  the  work  is  done  by  pupils ;  it  disappears 
if  the  teacher  makes  the  summary  and  the  students 
merely  play  follow-the-leader.  Then,  of  course, 
class  discussions,  real  discussions,  will  prove  of 
value.  The  pupils  should  do  most  of  the  talking, 
and  no  one  pupil  should  do  too  much  of  it.  Out 
of  the  class  discussions  will  grow  debates,  formal 
and  informal,  and  from  the  debates  the  pupils  will 
be  sent  back  to  the  text  for  proofs  and  texts  and 
similitudes.  If,  for  example,  Newman's  essay  on 
the  university  at  Athens  is  studied  in  this  thorough 
and  individualistic  way,  every  child  in  the  class 
will  finish  the  work  with  a  good  general  knowledge 
of  the  content  of  essay,  with  a  more  minute  knowl- 
edge of  many  things  than  he  would  otherwise  se- 


MATTER  IN   THE  ESSAY  33 

cure  in  ten  years  and  with  a  definite  understanding 
of  what  the  great  cardinal  was  talking  about. 

And  as  for  inspiration — well,  that  is  somewhat 
like  the  grace  of  God;  it  is  beyond  price  and  be- 
yond mere  human  effort.  But  its  basis  is  interest 
— broad,  sane,  cumulative  interest ;  and  that  interest 
will  always  be  found  in  the  class  where  the  teacher 
is  a  real  lover  of  books.  If  the  teacher  is  enthusi- 
astic about  Newman,  if  the  teacher  has  learned  from 
Newman  some  of  the  most  valuable  lessons  of 
life,  if  the  teacher  is  consciously  striving  to  emu- 
late Newman's  gratifying  clearness  of  thought  and 
Newman's  virile  and  idiomatic  diction,  if  the  teacher 
feels,  in  short,  that  Newman  is  called  great  in  the 
kingdom  of  letters — in  that  class  truly  will  the 
kingdom  of  letters  be  at  hand. 


CHAPTER  V 

MANNER  IN  THE  DRAMA 

THIS  is  not  going  to  be  a  specimen  lesson  in  Eng- 
lish. Our  purpose  is,  not  to  dictate  methods  of 
teaching  Shakespeare's  "Julius  Csesar,"  but  to  in- 
dicate the  materials  and  the  range  of  formal  ap- 
preciation, as  distinguished  from  the  appreciation 
which  we  will  call  (esthetic  and  the  appreciation 
which  we  call  vital. 

By  formal  appreciation  we  mean  a  study  of  the 
body  of  a  literary  masterpiece  as  distinguished  from 
its  soul.  We  investigate  what  might  be  called  its 
physical,  its  mechanical  elements.  We  observe  of 
what  materials  it  is  composed,  we  note  how  its  parts 
are  put  together,  we  discuss  its  external  form  and 
stature.  It  is  the  least  important  kind  of  apprecia- 
tion; but  it  is  not  intrinsically  unimportant.  The 
principal  phases  of  formal  study  may  be  summed 
up  under  eight  heads:  i.  Sources;  2.  Whole  Struc- 
ture; 3.  Part  Structure;  4.  Verse  Form;  5.  Figures 
of  Speech ;  6.  Sentence  Characteristics ;  7.  Word 
Characteristics ;  8.  Allusions  and  References. 

i.  Sources.  The  direct  source  of  Shakespeare's 
"Julius  Caesar"  is  Sir  Thomas  North's  English 
version  of  Plutarch's  "Lives  of  the  Noble  Grecians 

34 


MANNER   IN    THE  DRAMA  35 

and  Romans";  the  indirect  source  is,  of  course, 
Plutarch's  original  of  that  famous  work,  especially 
the  lives  of  Caesar,  Brutus  and  Antony.  It  is 
to  be  noted  that  in  his  selection  of  incidents  Shake- 
speare follows  Plutarch  closely,  and  that  some- 
times he  takes  whole  passages  from  the  North 
translation,  changing  only  a  few  words  here  and 
there.  The  student  should  make  a  detailed  com- 
parison of  such  parallel  passages  and  endeavor  to 
formulate  the  principles  that  guided  Shakespeare 
in  altering  the  prose  version.  Such  principles  are 
the  exigencies  of  the  verse  form,  verbal  form, 
verbal  economy,  picturesqueness  of  presentation 
and  the  requirements  of  dramatic  structure.  An- 
swers should  be  found  for  such  questions  as,  What 
episodes  in  Plutarch  did  Shakespeare  omit,  and 
why?  What  was  Shakespeare's  motive  in  com- 
pressing the  narrative  in  point  of  time?  In  his 
deviations  from  the  text  of  North  has  Shakespeare 
invariably  improved  on  his  source,  and  in  what  way  ? 
2.  Whole  Structure.  This  part  of  the  study 
involves  a  consideration  of  the  nature  of  the  drama 
as  a  literary  form.  What  is  a  drama?  How  does 
it  differ  from  a  novel  and  from  a  narrative  poem? 
Is  the  distinguishing  characteristic  of  the  dramatic 
(a)  dialogue;  or  (b)  division  into  acts  and  scenes; 
or  (c)  a  series  of  climaxes;  or  (d)  a  conflict  of 
wills;  or  (e)  an  embodiment  of  contrast?  Which 
of  these  theories  of  dramatic  workmanship  most 
successfully  applies  to  "Julms  Caesar"?  How  do 


36         TEACHING  THE  DRAMA  AND  THE   ESSAY 

you  distinguish  between  physical  action  and 
dramatic  action?  Apply  to  this  play  the  precept 
of  Aristotle  that  a  drama  must  have  (a)  a  be- 
ginning, (b)  a  middle,  and  (c)  a  conclusion.  What 
do  you  mean  by  the  climax  of  a  play?  How  does 
it  differ  from  the  conclusion?  To  what  extent  are 
the  traditional  "unities"  of  time,  place  and  action 
observed  in  "Julius  Caesar"  ?  Answering  these  and 
similar  questions  involves  a  comparison  of  "Julius 
Caesar"  with  other  dramas  and  with  representative 
novels  and  poems. 

3.  Structure  of  Parts.  "Julius  Caesar,"  though 
essentially  a  drama,  contains  specimens  of  the 
forms  of  discourse  commonly  classified  as  narra- 
tion, description,  exposition  and  argumentation. 
Specimens  of  each  of  those  forms  should  be  dis- 
cussed and  analyzed  and  compared.  For  instance, 
the  play  contains  two  passages  that  may  roughly 
be  called  orations.  Which  of  them — the  speech  of 
Brutus,  or  the  speech  of  Antony — is  a  true  oration, 
and  why?  Which  of  them  appeals  mainly  to  the 
intellect,  and  which  mainly  to  the  emotions? 
Which  of  the  two  orators  talks  over  the  heads  of 
his  auditors?  Compare  these  speeches  with  other 
speeches  in  Shakespeare — such  as  Portia's  plea  for 
mercy  and  Richard  Ill's  address  to  his  troops  be- 
fore the  Battle  of  Bosworth.  Compare  them  with 
representative  orations  such  as  Webster's  Bunker 
Hill  address  and  Robert  Emmet's  vindication.  As 
a  result  of  such  comparisons  attempt  to  formulate 


MANNER   IN   THE   DRAMA  37 

the  essential  qualities  of  a  good  oration.  Follow  a 
similar  method  of  procedure  with  passages  that  are 
mainly  narrative  and  descriptive. 

4.  Verse  Form.  What  do  you  suppose  was 
Shakespeare's  motive  in  writing  some  portions  of 
the  play  in  verse  and  others  in  prose?  Strengthen 
your  opinion  by  comparing  the  prose  and  the  verse 
portions  of  "Julius  Caesar"  with  the  corresponding 
portions  of  other  Shakespearean  plays.  Most  of 
the  metrical  portions  of  "Julius  Caesar"  are  written 
in  blank  verse,  but  occasional  rhymes  are  intro- 
duced; what  is  the  purpose  of  the  rhyming  lines? 
Apply  your  knowledge  of  English  prosody  (meter, 
rhyme,  rhythm,  stress,  etc.)  to  the  verse  portions 
of  the  play.  Why  is  scansion  in  English  verse  of 
less  moment  than  in  Latin  verse?  Quote  passages 
from  the  verse  portions  of  this  play  which  would 
lose  much  of  their  effect  if  written  in  prose.  Is 
it  easier  to  write  blank  verse  than  to  write  rhyming 
verse?  Try  it,  and  see.  Compare  a  bit  of  Shake- 
speare's blank  verse  with  passages  from  Milton's 
"Paradise  Lost"  and  Tennyson's  "Idyls  of  the 
King."  In  which  of  the  three  poets  do  you  find 
the  highest  degree  of  (a)  smoothness,  (b)  majesty, 
(c)  vigor,  (d)  variety?  Which  is  easiest  to  mem- 
orize? Why?  Note  how  the  correct  reading  of 
Shakespeare's  blank  verse  shows  that  certain  words 
were  pronounced  differently  in  his  day,  that,  for 
instance,  interred  is  a  trisyllable  in  the  line, 

"The  good  is  oft  interred  with  their  bones" ; 


38         TEACHING  THE  DRAMA  AND  THE   ESSAY 

that,  generally,  the  terminal  syllable  tion  approxi- 
mates more  closely  to  she-on  than  to  our  present- 
day  shun. 

5.  Figures  of  Speech.     This  phase  of  the  study 
involves  nothing  more  than  an  application  to  "Julius 
Caesar"  of  the  classification  of  figurative  language 
set  forth  in  the  ordinary  school  rhetoric.    For  some 
reason  or  other,  the  dissection  of  figures  of  speech 
receives  far  too  much  attention  in  some  classes; 
indeed,  we  have  known  of  instances  where  it  con- 
stituted the  sum  total  of  literary  study.     That  is 
an  abuse;  but  tha  abuse  of  a  pedagogical  aid  is 
no  argument  against  its  judicious  and  rightly  pro- 
portioned use. 

6.  Sentence  Characteristics.    We  have  here  an 
opportunity  of  peeping  into  Shakespeare's  workshop 
and  seeing  just  how  he  put  his  words  together.    Let 
us  take  such  a  sentence  as  the  following: 

"The  skies  are  painted  with  unnumber'd  sparks; 
They  are  all  fire  and  every  one  doth  shine; 
But  there's  but  one  in  all  doth  hold  his  place : 
So  in  the  world;  'tis  furnish'd  well  with  men, 
And  men  are  flesh  and  blood,  and  apprehensive; 
Yet  in  the  number  I  do  know  but  one 
That  unassailable  holds  on  his  rank, 
Unshaked  of  motion :  and  that  I  am  he, 
Let  me  a  little  show  it,  even  in  this ; 
That  I  was  constant  Cimber  should  be  banish'd, 
And  constant  do  remain  to  keep  him  so." 

Here  we  have  three  general  divisions:  a  com- 
parison, an  assertion  and  a  proof.  The  comparison, 
as  all  comparisons  must  have,  has  two  members: 
The  skies  painted  with  unnumber'd  sparks,  and 


MANNER   IN   THE  DRAMA  39 

the  world  furnished  well  with  men.  The  element 
of  dissimilarity  on  which  the  simile  is  based  is  the 
distinction,  in  the  skies  and  in  the  world,  between 
the  many  and  the  one:  The  stars  are  all  fire  and 
they  all  shine,  the  men  are  flesh  and  blood  and 
apprehensive;  the  one  star  doth  hold  his  place,  the 
one  man  holds  on  his  rank.  Now  comes,  with  the 
tremendous  emphasis  of  brevity,  the  assertion:  I 
am  he;  and  here  we  have  the  backbone,  the  apex, 
the  climax  of  the  sentence,  which  flows  gracefully 
and  impressively  to  its  conclusion  by  means  of  the 
proof  of  the  assertion.  The  proof,  preceded  by 
the  transitional  element,  "Let  me  a  little  show  it, 
even  in  this/'  consists  of  two  parts :  I  was  constant 
and  I  am  constant. 

The  foregoing  is  an  example  of  the  sort  of 
sentence  analysis  that  best  serves  to  bring  out  the 
meaning  of  the  text  studied,  to  develop  the  ob- 
servation and  critical  judgment  of  the  student  and 
to  reveal  the  proper  manner  of  using  words,  the 
material  of  spoken  and  written  speech.  There  is 
considerably  less  pedagogical  worth  in  the  old 
method  of  breaking  up  the  sentence  into  its  com- 
ponent clauses  and  resting  satisfied  with  a  percep- 
tion of  the  purely  grammatical  relations  of  their 
parts.  A  sentence  must  be  regarded  primarily  and 
essentially  as  the  expression  of  a  thought;  to  in- 
terject mention  of  correlative  phrases  and  subor- 
dinate clauses  is  merely  to  confuse  the  issue.  The 
student  who  learns  to  analyze  a  sentence  with 


4O         TEACHING   THE   DRAMA   AND   THE   ESSAY 

reference  to  the  correspondence  of  thought  to  ex- 
pression will  absorb  correct  usage  instead  of  learn- 
ing it  out  of  a  book;  and  when  it  is  secured  by 
means  of  absorption  it  stands  a  much  better  chance 
of  becoming  an  integral  part  of  his  thought  process 
and  his  expression  process. 

For  the  rest,  the  ordinary  classification  of  sen- 
tences into  declarative,  imperative,  interrogative  and 
exclamatory;  into  simple,  complex  and  compound; 
into  periodic,  loose,  balanced  and  mixed,  may  be 
applied  to  suitable  passages  of  the  play.  The  text 
will  furnish  material  for  illustrations  of  the  teach- 
ings of  the  student's  manual  of  rhetoric.  The  one 
caution  to  be  kept  in  mind  is  that  classification  and 
analysis  are  means,  not  ends. 

7.  Word  Characteristics.  The  possibilities  of 
study  from  this  point  of  view  are  almost  infinite. 
For  example,  in  the  sentence  already  used  for  an- 
other purpose,  let  us  take  his  in  the  third  line. 
Why  not  its?  An  alert  pupil  might  offer  the  ex- 
planation that  Shakespeare  is  personifying  the 
north  star;  but  such  is  far  from  the  fact.  Rather, 
the  poet,  for  the  purpose  of  his  comparison,  holds 
in  his  mind  a  distinction  between  the  inanimate 
stars  and  the  living  men  of  flesh  and  blood.  The 
explanation  is  found  in  the  simple  but  illuminating 
historical  fact  that  the  word  its  was  not  in  use 
in  Shakespeare's  day;  the  possessive  singular  of 
it  was  his,  even  as  at  present  the  possessive  plural, 
their  or  theirs,  is  applied  indiscriminately  to  things 


MANNER   IN   THE   DRAMA  4! 

as  well  as  to  persons.  Again,  there  is  the  word 
apprehensive,  in  the  fifth  line  of  our  excerpt.  In 
modern  usage  the  word  means  something  very 
different  from  what  was  in  Shakespeare's  mind. 
A  man  is  apprehensive  when  he  fears  an  impend- 
ing disaster,  when  he  is  vaguely  conscious  of  an 
approaching  calamity.  In  that  sense,  in  the  modern 
sense,  it  could  be  said  that  in  this  play  Calpurnia 
was  apprehensive  when  she  begged  Caesar  not  to 
leave  his  house  on  the  morning  of  the  fatal  day. 
But  in  the  line, 

"And  men  are  flesh  and  blood,  and  apprehensive," 

the  word  means,  capable  of  reasoning,  of  under- 
standing; endowed  with  intelligence.  And  then 
we  look  to  the  derivation  of  the  word  and  find  that 
it  came  into  English  through  the  French  from  a 
Latin  verb  meaning,  literally  (ad-prehendo),  to 
grasp,  to  lay  hold  of  something.  In  the  modern 
sense,  we  lay  hold  of  an  unpleasant  likelihood;  in 
the  Shakespearean  sense,  we  are  able  to  lay  hold 
of  intellectual  entities. 

8.  Allusions  and  References.  A  reference  is 
direct,  an  allusion  is  indirect.  I  allude  when  I 
speak  of  "a  distinguished  citizen  of  Oyster  Bay/' 
and  I  refer  when  I  speak  of  "the  late  Theodore 
Roosevelt."  A  very  important  part  of  our  study 
of  "Julius  Caesar"  is  to  understand  the  allusions 
and  references  with  which  the  play  abounds :  Lu- 
percalia,  Pompey's  statue,  the  ides  of  March,  rascal 


42         TEACHING  THE   DRAMA   AND   THE   ESSAY 

counters,  Anchises;  and — this  not  least  in  impor- 
tance— the  cobbler's  shower  of  puns  in  the  opening 
scene  of  the  play.  It  is  here  that  school  editions 
with  notes  are  really  helpful. 


CHAPTER  VI 

MANNER    IN    THE    ESSAY 

IN  every  piece  of  good  writing  matter,  manner 
and  mood  are  agreeably  fused,  just  as  in  every  good 
orchestra  brass  and  wood  and  string  instruments 
are  agreeably  harmonized.  The  literary  master- 
piece is  like  the  fair  valley  in  Dante's  "Purgatorio" 
where  nature  wrought  "of  the  sweetness  of  a  thou- 
sand odors  one  rare  and  blended  fragrance."  In 
art  as  in  life  the  finished  product  is  a  synthesis. 
But  when  we  study  a  masterpiece — of  living,  of 
orchestration  or  of  writing — we  necessarily  proceed 
to  analysis,  to  taking  to  pieces.  We  isolate  the  com- 
ponent parts  and  examine  them  separately. 

We  are  intent  on  matter  when  we  answer  the 
question,  What  does  this  author  teach  us  ?  We  are 
intent  on  mood  when  we  answer  the  question,  What 
does  this  author  make  me  feel?  We  are  intent  on 
manner  when  we  answer  the  question,  How  does 
this  author  impart  the  lesson  and  how  does  he  con- 
vey his  emotional  mood  ? 

The  study  of  manner  in  the  essay  is  an  applica- 
tion of  the  principle  of  formal  appreciation  in  the 
study  of  literature.  From  this  point  of  view  we 
consider  the  essay  in  its  technical  aspects,  as  a 

43 


y| /|         TEACHING   THE   DRAMA   AND   THE   ESSAY 

work  of  art.  It  is  a  piece  of  good  writing;  and, 
interested  as  we  are  in  the  process  of  learning  how 
to  write,  we  take  the  masterpiece  to  pieces  to  find 
out  how  it  has  been  constructed.  We  consider  the 
general  plan  of  the  work — what  the  author  pro- 
posed to  himself  as  the  scope  and  method  of  the 
essay.  We  examine  the  order  and  arrangement  of 
his  ideas,  and  the  devices  he  employed  to  secure 
emphasis,  ease  and  variety.  We  study  his  para- 
graph structure,  noting  in  several  instances  how  he 
expanded  and  developed  the  germ  of  thought  con- 
tained in  his  topic  sentence;  and  we  observe  where 
the  topic  sentence  comes  at  the  beginning  of  the 
paragraph,  where  it  comes  at  the  end,  where  it 
comes  in  the  middle,  where  it  is  divided  and  where 
it  is  only  implied.  We  make  a  study  of  his  sentence 
structure,  noting  the  variety  in  sentence  length  and 
sentence  formation.  We  discuss  the  author's  choice 
of  words  and  list  those  words  which  are  new  to  us 
or  which  are  used  in  an  unfamiliar  sense.  In  gen- 
eral, we  apply  all  we  know  of  grammar  and  rhetoric 
to  the  essay  under  consideration. 

Manner  is  the  how  of  the  essay.  We  are  asking 
about  the  author's  manner  or  style  when  we  put 
such  questions  as  these:  Are  the  sentences  gen- 
erally long  or  short,  relatively  simple  or  highly  com- 
plex, prevailingly  loose  or  prevailingly  periodic?  Is 
the  essay  easy  to  follow?  Is  it  possible  to  make  a 
plan  of  the  essay?  Is  the  language  familiar  and 
idiomatic,  or  is  it  bookish  and  learned? 


MANNER   IN   THE   ESSAY  4$ 

The  study  of  manner,  therefore,  is  the  study  of 
technique.  It  involves  a  classification  of  the  tools 
of  writing  and  an  investigation  of  the  ways  those 
tools  are  used.  Such  study  has  a  twofold  purpose : 
First,  by  means  of  it  we  seek  to  know  the  author 
better,  to  secure  a  more  definite  knowledge  of  what 
he  has  to  say  and  of  what  he  thinks  and  feels ;  and, 
secondly,  we  seek  to  learn  how  to  express  our  own 
thoughts  and  feelings.  The  study  of  style  or  man- 
ner is  the  connecting  link  between  reading  and 
writing.  Without  reading,  we  should  have  no  mate- 
rial to  analyze;  and  without  writing,  we  should  be 
unable  to  carry  our  findings  into  fruitful  practice. 

Some  notion  of  the  importance  of  giving  due  at- 
tention to  manner  in  literary  study  may  be  gained 
from  De  Quincey's  famous  essay  on  style,  in  the 
course  of  which  he  speaks  of  "that  general  prin- 
ciple in  England  which  tends  in  all  things  to  set 
the  matter  above  the  manner,  the  substance  above 
the  external  show — a  principle  noble  in  itself,  but 
inevitably  wrong  wherever  [as  is  the  case  with  every 
genuine  literary  masterpiece]  the  manner  blends 
inseparably  with  the  substance."  The  study  of 
style  enables  us  to  evaluate  an  author  and  to  ad- 
mire his  ability,  not  blindly  or  impressionably,  but 
with  poise  and  discrimination.  As  De  Quincey  well 
puts  it,  "to  feel  is  not  to  feel  consciously.  Many 
a  man  is  fascinated  by  the  artifices  of  composition 
who  fancies  that  it  is  the  subject  which  has  operated 


46        TEACHING   THE  DRAMA  AND   THE   ESSAY 

so   potently.  .  .  .  That   is   good   rhetoric    for   the 
hustings  which  is  bad  for  a  book." 

Every  worthwhile  writer  is  susceptible  of  study 
from  the  viewpoints  of  matter,  manner  and  mood, 
for  in  every  piece  of  good  writing  all  three  elements 
find  place.  But  every  writer  is,  consciously  or 
otherwise,  mainly  concerned  with  one  of  the  three. 
In  Charles  Lamb  it  is  the  mood  which  chiefly 
matters;  we  do  get  some  information  from  the 
gentle  Elia  and  we  do  learn  something  of  the  art 
of  writing;  but  for  the  most  part  we  read  him 
because  of  the  lure  and  variety  of  his  moods.  In 
Coleridge's  prose,  notably  the  "Biographia  Liter- 
aria"  and  the  "Lectures  on  Shakespeare,"  while 
we  observe  the  mood  of  the  scholar  and  the  prac- 
ticed art  of  the  literary  man,  we  are  mainly  intent 
on  the  substance,  the  matter,  the  thought;  Cole- 
ridge's prose  is  deserving  of  our  best  efforts  be- 
cause of  the  information  and  stimulation  it  im- 
parts, because  it  embodies  the  utterances  of  a  man 
of  keen  and  ripened  intellect  who  has  much  to  tell 
us  that  we  might  profitably  learn.  Lamb  is  like  a 
whimsical  acquaintance  who  sits  by  the  fire  chatting 
about  this,  that  and  the  other,  coloring  books  and 
men  and  life,  teacups,  chimney  sweeps  and  card 
games,  with  the  glow  of  his  fancy;  Coleridge  is 
like  a  dignified  and  erudite  teacher,  enshrined  be- 
hind a  thickly  littered  desk,  who  points  out  to  us 
the  significant  things  in  Milton  and  Shakespeare 
and  who  discusses  his  friend  Wordsworth  less  as 


MANNER   IN   THE  ESSAY  47 

a  man  than  as  a  literary  craftsman.  In  Lamb  it 
is  the  mood  that  chiefly  concerns  us;  in  Coleridge 
it  is  the  matter. 

In  the  most  representative  work  of  De  Quincey, 
however,  it  is  neither  matter  nor  mood.  Neither 
mood  nor  matter  is  notably  deficient  in  De  Quincey, 
as  may  be  verified  by  a  glance  at  his  description  of 
his  little  sister's  death  and  at  the  essay  on  style 
from  which  we  have  just  quoted;  but  in  his  most 
characteristic  passages — in  "Joan  of  Arc,"  for  in- 
stance, and  in  "Levana  and  Our  Ladies  of  Sorrow" 
— our  attention  is  predominantly  attracted — some- 
times, indeed,  virtually  distracted — to  the  manner, 
to  the  style.  The  "poetic  prose"  of  this  "great 
soul  in  a  frail  body,"  as  Francis  Thompson  de- 
scribes him,  has  been  lavishly  praised  and  as  un- 
sparingly condemned;  but  if  we  were  to  indicate 
any  appreciable  flaw  in  the  rare  and  startling  music 
he  evokes  from  his  torrentuous  flow  of  golden 
words  it  would  be  the  fact  that  often  in  reading 
him  we  forget  what  he  is  saying  because  of  the 
splendor  and  sheer  dexterity  of  the  way  he  says 
it.  He  is  a  prestidigitator.  He  twirls  spirals  of 
parti-colored  phrases,  balances  towering  structures 
of  tropes  and  flashes  fleet-footed  sentences  out  of  a 
receptacle  which  in  other  hands  would  remain 
neither  more  nor  less  than  a  painfully  commonplace 
top  hat. 

But  De  Quincey,  despite  the  splendor  of  his 
manner,  will  prove  less  suitable  for  a  class  study 


48         TEACHING   THE   DRAMA   AND  THE   ESSAY 

in  style  than  one  of  his  less  brilliant  but  more 
dependable  contemporaries,  Thomas  Babington 
Macaulay.  It  is  not  difficult  to  say  disparaging 
things  about  Macaulay's  style  and  it  is  not  easy  to 
justify  some  of  his  more  irritating  mannerisms; 
but  taken  at  his  most  representative — which,  in  his 
case,  is  at  his  best — he  offers  a  fine  subject  for 
helpful  analysis.  How  refreshingly  clear  he  is! 
His  essays  are  veritable  structures,  architectural 
creations,  part  sustaining  part,  varied  in  detail  and 
unified  as  a  whole.  There  is  nothing  cloudy,  noth- 
ing uncertain  in  Macaulay's  style;  we  may  not 
always  agree  with  his  opinions,  but  we  certainly 
cannot  fail  to  understand  them.  His  transitions 
from  sentence  to  sentence  and  from  paragraph  to 
paragraph  are  at  once  graceful  and  lucid.  His 
paragraph  structure  is  strikingly  consistent:  If  he 
starts  with  a  general  statement,  he  never  fails  to 
explain  or  prove  or  amplify  it  by  means  of  several 
specific  statements,  and  those  specific  statements  are 
arranged  with  a  view  to  their  cumulative  effect. 

Let  the  class  read  his  essay  on  Johnson  or  his 
deservedly  popular  tribute  to  the  Catholic  Church 
(the  third  paragraph  in  his  review  of  Von  Ranke's 
"History  of  the  Popes")  and  then  discuss  his  way 
of  saying  things,  the  how  of  his  literary  art.  Some 
valuable  suggestions  for  such  a  discussion  will  be 
found  in  an  old  but  excellent  textbook,  William 
Minto's  "Manual  of  English  Prose  Literature." 
Then  let  the  class  formulate  what  it  considers  the 


MANNER   IN   THE   ESSAY  49 

leading  traits  of  Macaulay's  manner.  The  result 
would  include  findings  on  his  choice  of  words,  on 
the  length  and  kind  of  his  sentences,  on  his  para- 
graph structure,  on  his  use  of  such  devices  as 
antithesis,  repetition  and  climax,  on  his  fondness 
for  specific  rather  than  generic  ideas,  on  his  em- 
ployment of  means  to  secure  and  maintain  clearness, 
order  and  interest. 

From  Macaulay  the  pupils  will  learn  much  re- 
garding the  art  of  writing.  They  will  realize  the 
importance  of  vivid,  picturesque  images.  Macaulay 
does  not  say,  "Dr.  Johnson  at  one  period  of  his 
life  was  noted  for  acting  in  a  very  strange  man- 
ner" ;  he  states  directly  and  crisply  the  things  John- 
son did ;  he  pictures  the  portly  lexicographer  touch- 
ing the  posts  in  the  street  as  he  passed  and  even 
going  back  to  touch  one  he  had  overlooked,  and 
startling  a  drawing  room  by  twitching  off  a  young 
lady's  shoe  or  ejaculating  a  phrase  from  the  Lord's 
Prayer.  He  does  not  say,  "The  Catholic  Church 
comes  down  from  the  days  when  the  pagans  adored 
false  gods  and  held  their  cruel  games";  instead  he 
makes  the  idea  vivid  and  forceful  in  the  lines : 

"No  other  institution  is  left  standing  which  car- 
ries the  mind  back  to  the  times  when  the  smoke  of 
sacrifice  rose  from  the  Pantheon,  and  when 
camelopards  and  tigers  bounded  in  the  Flavian 
amphitheatre/' 

From  Macaulay  the  pupils  will  learn  the  art, 
not  merely  of  telling  things,  but  of,  making  the 


5O         TEACHING  THE  DRAMA  AND   THE   ESSAY 

reader  see  things.  Observe  how  tHe  author  makes 
a  living  figure  of  young  Johnson  at  Oxford  with 
his  tattered  gown  and  broken  shoes ;  how  he  draws 
in  a  few  bold  strokes  the  elderly  widow — "painted 
half  an  inch  thick" — whom  Johnson  happily  mar- 
ried ;  how  he  reconstructs  two  periods  in  history  by 
his  reference  to  "the  Pope  who  crowned  Napoleon 
in  the  nineteenth  century"  and  "the  Pope  who 
crowned  Pepin  in  the  eighth" ;  how  he  compels  a 
realization  of  the  indefectibility  of  the  Church,  not 
by  simply  saying  with  the  Baltimore  Cathechism 
that  "the  Church  as  Christ  founded  it  will  last  till 
the  end  of  time,"  but  by  appealing  to  memory  and 
imagination  in  the  words:  "The  Catholic  Church 
is  still  sending  forth  to  the  farthest  ends  of  the 
world  missionaries  as  zealous  as  those  who  landed 
in  Kent  with  Augustin,  and  still  confronting  hostile 
kings  with  the  same  spirit  with  which  she  confronted 
Attila." 

In  the  study  of  style  there  must  be  room  for  ad- 
verse as  well  as  favorable  criticism,  for  censure  as 
well  as  appreciation.  Every  writer  has  the  defects 
of  his  virtues,  and  the  pupils  learn  something  from 
observing  the  shortcomings  of  the  author.  In  the 
case  of  Macaulay,  though  there  is  lack  of  dis- 
crimination in  the  oft-repeated  saying  that  he  would 
tell  a  lie  to  turn  a  period,  instances  can  be  found 
where  his  desire  to  be  picturesque  in  description 
or  balanced  in  sentence  structure  leads  him  into 
inaccuracy.  Thus  it  is  that  in  his  review  of  Bos- 


MANNER   IN   THE   ESSAY  51 

well's  "Life  of  Johnson"  his  effort  to  establish  a 
contrast  between  the  greatness  of  the  book  and  the 
littleness  of  the  man  who  wrote  it  makes  him  dis- 
tinctly unfair  to  Boswell;  the  little  Scotsman  was 
by  no  means  the  burr  on  Johnson's  coattails  that 
Macaulay's  picture  makes  of  him.  Nor  was  Mrs. 
Porter,  who  became  Johnson's  wife,  altogether  the 
impossible  creature  whom  the  doctor  so  ardently 
admired;  love  may  be  blind,  but  even  in  Johnson's 
case  it  could  hardly  be  as  blind  as  that.  Similarly, 
Macaulay  sacrifices  exactness  of  statement  for 
rhetorical  effectiveness  when  he  represents  the  long 
line  of  the  Popes  extending  into  the  past  "till  it  is 
lost  in  the  twilight  of  fable."  There  was  no  twilight 
and  no  fable  whatever  about  the  origin  of  the  Pa- 
pacy, as  Macaulay  himself  very  well  knew,  for  he 
was  so  familiar  with  the  list  of  the  august  dynasty 
that  he  was  supposed  to  be  able  to  recite  it  back- 
wards. 

In  the  class  discussions  concerning  the  effective- 
ness of  the  stylistic  methods  and  devices  of  an 
author  there  will  doubtless  arise  differences  of 
opinion.  This  is  well,  for  the  clash  of  thought  will 
induce  new  and  deeper  thought,  and  the  pupils 
will  learn  the  salutary  truth  that  much  may  be  said 
on  both  sides.  Thus  it  is  possible  to  find  good 
arguments  both  pro  and  con  anent  the  traveller 
from  New  Zealand  who  makes  his  appearance  in  the 
last  sentence  of  the  paragraph  from  the  essay  on 
Von  Ranke.  On  the  one  hand  it  is  said  that 


52         TEACHING   THE  DRAMA   AND   THE   ESSAY 

Macaulay  spoils  his  brilliant  tribute  by  a  reference 
to  a  vague,  remote  and  highly  improbable  occur- 
rence, that  the  "broken  arch  of  London  bridge"  and 
"the  ruins  of  St.   Paul's"  make  no  appeal  to  an 
active,  practical  mind,  and  that  the  New  Zealander 
is   literally  and   figuratively   far-fetched.     On  the 
other  hand  it  is  urged  that  the  sentence  forms  a 
fitting  and  climacteric  conclusion  to  the  paragraph, 
that  it  points  the  moral  and  adorns  the  tale,  that, 
especially,  it  tells  the  truth ;  for  the  Catholic  Church 
will  exist,  even  were  the  islands  of  the  sea  to  be- 
come the  center  of  civilization  and  London  were  to 
take  its  silent  place  with  Babylon  and  Tyre.     In 
fact,  it  would  not  be  out  of  harmony  with  Macau- 
lay's  mood  to  suggest  that  under  such  circumstances 
the  traveller  from  the  antipodes  would  probably  be 
a  Catholic  parish  priest  on  his  vacation ! 

•  •••••• 

The  essayist  is  a  theatrical  producer,  a  stage 
director  of  insight,  experience  and  artistic  skill. 
When  we  read  his  work  uncritically  we  are  merely 
sitting  in  the  auditorium  observing  the  excellence 
of  his  matter,  the  deftness  of  his  manner,  the 
glory  of  his  mood.  But  when  we  study  the  style 
of  his  writings,  we  go  behind  the  scenes  and  study 
the  mechanism  of  his  mimic  world.  And  we  learn 
to  go  forth  and  make  worlds  of  our  own. 


CHAPTER  VII 

MOOD   IN    THE    DRAMA 

THE  obvious  reply  to  the  question,  "How  am  I 
to  bring  out  the  aesthetic  element  in  teaching 
Shakespeare's  'Ju^us  Caesar'?"  would  be:  Simply 
apply  to  the  play  the  principles  of  the  science  of 
aesthetics.  Now,  that  answer  is  in  a  great  measure 
impressive,  even  reassuring,  and  to  the  professional 
educationist — who  must  be  rigidly  differentiated 
from  the  professional  educator — it  may  even  settle 
the  difficulty  forever.  The  thing  is  so  very,  very 
simple.  Here  you  have  the  literary  masterpiece — 
that  is  Exhibit  A ;  and  here  you  have  the  principles 
of  aesthetics — call  them  Exhibit  B.  Stir  Exhibit 
A  and  Exhibit  B  together  for  the  space  of  one  class 
period — adding  the  salt  of  wit  and  the  pepper  of 
tact  according  to  taste — and  let  the  decoction  cool 
gradually;  that  is  all. 

That  were  indeed  all,  but  for  one  thing.  It  is 
dangerous,  and  sometimes  fatal,  to  make  free  use 
of  arbitrary,  ready-made  principles  of  aesthetics. 
Strictly  speaking,  there  is  no  such  thing  as  a  science 
of  aesthetics;  and  there  is  no  such  personage  as  an 
infallible  aesthetic  pope.  Authorities  on  aesthetics 
we  certainly  have;  but  they  are  not  absolute  and 

53 


54         TEACHING  THE  DRAMA  AND  THE   ESSAY 

unquestioned  authorities.  Lessing,  for  example, 
differs  with  Aristotle,  and — to  become  very  modern 
for  a  moment — Mr.  Willard  Huntington  Wright 
differs  with  Lessing.  We  have  no  set  of  aesthetic 
principles  which  we  can  apply  to  "Julius  Caesar" 
or  to  any  other  masterpiece  with  the  assurance  that 
if  the  masterpiece  conforms  to  them  it  is  a  work 
of  art  and  if  it  ignores  them  it  is  a  monstrosity. 
Let  every  teacher  ponder  the  sad  case  of  Tolstoy. 
In  his  entertaining  little  book,  "What  Is  Art?" 
Tolstoy  formulated  a  definition  of  art,  and  then,  in 
the  light  of  his  definition,  proceeded  to  demon- 
strate, to  his  own  manifest  satisfaction,  that 
Beethoven  was  no  musician,  that  Michelangelo  was 
no  sculptor,  that  Titian  was  no  painter,  that  Shake- 
speare was  no  dramatist.  He  assumed  that  his 
definition  was  true,  sound,  conclusive  and  all-em- 
bracing, and  thence  was  forced  to  the  conviction 
that  some  of  the  world's  supreme  artists  were  really 
not  artists  at  all. 

What,  then,  are  we  to  do  ?  We  are  to  begin,  not 
with  principles  of  aesthetics,  but  with  the  master- 
piece; we  are  to  proceed  not  deductively,  but  in- 
ductively. We  must  not  start  out  by  formulating 
or  adopting  certain  principles  of  aesthetics  and  ask- 
ing ourselves,  "Does  *JU^US  Caesar'  conform  to 
these  principles?"  But  we  must  study  the  play 
and  formulate  our  principles  of  aesthetics  in  the 
light  of  that  study.  The  remainder  of  these  sug- 


MOOD   IN   THE  DRAMA  55 

gestions  are  practical  hints  as  to  how  such  a  study 
may  be  carried  on. 

i.  A  cursory  reading  of  "Ju^us  Caesar"  makes 
plain  to  us  that  in  the  play  we  have  a  diversity  of 
scenes — street  scenes,  domestic  scenes ;  day  scenes, 
night  scenes;  council  scenes,  battle  scenes.  And 
we  have  a  diversity  of  events — secret  plotting, 
public  speaking,  thunder  and  lightning,  a  tender 
colloquy  between  a  husband  and  his  wife,  the  as- 
sassination of  a  monarch,  the  visitation  of  a  ghost. 
And  we  have  a  diversity  of  characters — Brutus, 
the  idealist;  Cassius,  the  wily  politician;  an  ex- 
tremely witty  shoemaker;  an  extremely  stupid 
senator  (Casca)  ;  Portia,  the  faithful  wife;  Antony, 
the  incomparable  orator.  From  all  this  we  are 
justified  in  concluding  that  one  essential  char- 
acteristic of  the  play  is  variety  or  diversity.  And, 
when  we  reflect  a  little,  we  perceive  that  in  other 
works  of  art  some  sort  of  diversity  is  recognizable 
— in  great  novels  and  great  paintings  and  great 
musical  scores.  Variety,  therefore,  we  may  assume, 
is  one  element  of  aesthetic  excellence. 

But  second  thought  will  speedily  convince  us  that 
not  all  variety  makes  for  art.  A  list  of  fifty  words 
culled  at  random  from  a  dictionary,  twenty  daubs 
of  assorted  colors  on  a  canvas,  would  manifest 
diversity,  but  certainly  not  artistic  diversity.  How 
can  we  distinguish  between  the  variety  which  is 
artistic  and  the  variety  which  is  not?  We  turn 
again  to  "Ju^us  Caesar"  for  light.  And  now  we 


56        TEACHING   THE   DRAMA   AND   THE   ESSAY 

make  the  important  discovery  that  running  through 
the  diversity  of  scenes,  events  and  characters,  there 
is  a  thread  of  unity  which  coordinates  them  and 
binds  them  together  and  welds  them  into  a  concen- 
trated appeal  to  our  intellects  and  our  emotions. 
That  thread  of  unity  is  indicated  in  the  title  of  the 
play,  Julius  Ccesar.  Caesar  living  and,  more  espe- 
cially, Caesar  dead,  dominates  all  the  scenes,  all 
the  events,  all  the  characters.  The  streets  are 
thronged  in  the  first  act  because  Caesar  is  coming 
back  to  Rome;  the  field  of  Philippi  is  corpse-strewn 
in  the  last  act  because  Caesar's  death  must  be 
avenged;  the  storm  breaks  upon  the  city  as  an 
omen  of  Caesar's  assassination;  the  pathetic  con- 
versation between  Brutus  and  Portia  takes  place 
because  the  husband  has  thoughts  concerning  Caesar 
that  he  dare  not  reveal  to  his  wife;  and  all  the 
varied  characters — patricians  and  plebeians,  men  of 
thought  and  men  of  action,  men  good  and  men  bad, 
men  wise  and  men  otherwise,  are  united  and 
brought  together  by  one  thing  that  they  have  in 
common — their  attitude  toward  Caesar;  they  are 
with  him  or  against  him.  Now  we  see  that  our 
fifty  words  from  the  dictionary  may  become  a 
work  of  art  if  a  master  hand  forges  them  into 
literary  unity,  that  our  twenty  daubs  of  color,  ar- 
ranged and  blended  into  artistic  unity  by  a  Rem- 
brandt or  a  Velasquez,  may  become  a  masterpiece. 
From  all  this  we  formulate  our  first  principle  of 


MOOD   IN    THE   DRAMA  57 

aesthetics:     Beauty  in  literature  is  a  combination 
of  unity  and  diversity. 

2.  We  now  take  a  step  further.  Again  reading 
the  play,  we  observe  that,  from  one  point  of  view, 
it  deals  with  relatively  simple  things,  things  that 
are  taking  place  around  us  every  day,  things  that 
even  the  youngest  of  us  can  understand.  One  man 
has  achieved  great  power,  and  some  other  men 
don't  like  him  on  that  account  and  some  other  men 
do.  The  men  who  don't  like  him  plot  his  death 
and  succeed  in  killing  him.  The  men  who  do  like 
him  fight  with  the  men  who  don't  like  him  and 
defeat  them  in  battle.  This  note  of  simplicity, 
characteristic  of  the  play  as  a  whole,  is  equally 
characteristic  of  the  play  in  detail.  The  commoner 
in  the  first  act  enjoys  "talking  back"  to  the  tribune; 
Portia  surmises  that  her  husband  has  something 
on  his  mind ;  Brutus,  in  addressing  the  mob,  makes 
the  very  common  mistake  of  talking  over  their 
heads,  while  Antony  tells  them  that  which  they 
themselves  do  know;  Brutus  and  Cassius  say  un- 
pleasant things  to  each  other  and  then  shake  hands ; 
overcome  by  defeat,  the  leading  conspirators  com- 
mit suicide ;  Antony  fights  vigorously  against  Brutus 
living  and  generously  praises  Brutus  dead.  Such 
things  are  happening  around  us  every  day;  if  we 
demand  proof  let  us  simply  open  our  eyes  and  our 
ears,  examine  our  conscience  and  scan  the  morning 
newspaper.  So  we  are  warranted  in  setting  down 
simplicity  as  a  trait  of  a  good  play;  and  more 


58         TEACHING   THE   DRAMA   AND   THE   ESSAY 

thought  and  analysis  will  show  us  that  simplicity 
is  likewise  a  characteristic  of  a  good  novel,  a  good 
statue,  a  good  piece  of  architecture,  a  good  sym- 
phony. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  not  all  simplicity  is 
artistic.  We  remember  some  of  those  bald  pas- 
sages in  Wordsworth,  we  read  some  of  Walt  Whit- 
man's silly  catalogues,  we  investigate  some  speci- 
mens of  our  present  day  vers  libre;  and  we  are  at 
once  quite  sure  that  some  simplicity  is  sheer  silli- 
ness. We  know  well  that  the  line, 

"Much  have  I  traveled  in  the  realms  of  gold/' 
is  simple,  and  yet  poetry ;  and  that  the  line, 
"I  put  my  hat  upon  my  head  and  walked  into  the  Strand," 

is  simple,  and  yet  not  poetry.  Will  "Julius  Caesar" 
enable  us  to  discover  the  secret  of  artistic  simplicity? 
Let  us  see.  A  group  of  men  want  to  do  away 
with  Caesar.  That  is  simple.  But  they  are  ani- 
mated by  a  complexity  of  motives.  Casca  is  against 
Caesar  because  he  is  vexed  by  Caesar's  great  popu- 
larity; Cassius  is  against  Caesar  because  he  knows 
that  Caesar  is  against  him;  Brutus  is  against  Caesar 
— and  here  is  complexity  within  complexity — be- 
cause, though  he  loves  Caesar  much,  yet  he  loves 
Rome  more.  Again,  the  fact  that  Caesar  is  killed 
by  the  conspirators  is  simple;  but  the  assassination 
is  accomplished  only  after  a  complexity  of  events. 
Brutus  must  be  won  over  to  the  conspirators;  un- 


MOOD   IN   THE  DRAMA  59 

certainty  and  differences  of  opinion  characterize 
the  meeting  in  Brutus's  garden;  on  the  morning 
of  the  fatal  day  Caesar  is  going  to  the  capitol ;  then, 
at  his  wife's  urging,  he  determines  to  remain  at 
home;  after  that,  he  decides  to  go;  and  a  few 
minutes  later  he  tells  everybody  that  he  is  constant 
as  the  northern  star;  before  the  conspirators  carry 
out  their  purpose,  Antony  must  be  taken  away  from 
the  scene;  Brutus  and  Cassius  get  certain  warning 
that  news  of  their  design  has  leaked  out;  Caesar  is 
warned  of  the  plot  against  him — will  he  take  pre- 
cautions ? 

Hence  we  formulate  our  second  principle  of 
aesthetics:  Beauty  in  literature  is  a  combination 
of  simplicity  and  complexity. 

3.  Another  reading  of  the  play  brings  out  a  not 
less  interesting  fact.  Shakespeare  does  wonderful 
things  with  words.  For  instance,  he  constructs  in 
Antony's  oration  a  masterpiece  of  oratory.  As  we 
read  the  lines,  the  words  fall  easily  and  naturally, 
almost  inevitably,  into  their  places.  The  speech  is 
smooth,  graceful,  sonorous.  It  is  suggestive,  in- 
spiring. Take  the  lines, 

"  'Twas  on  a  summer's  evening,  in  his  tent, 
The  day  he  overcame  the  Nervii." 

Even  the  dullest  mind  can  understand  what  those 
lines  mean ;  even  the  feeblest  fancy  can  construct 
a  picture  of  the  conqueror,  after  the  perils  and 
heat  of  the  battle,  wrapping  his  mantle  about  him 


60        TEACHING  THE  DRAMA   AND  THE   ESSAY 

and  gazing  through  the  half-open  door  of  his  tent 
at  the  summer  fields  glowing  in  the  sunset.  Yes, 
it  gives  the  impression  of  infinite  ease  in  writing. 

Well,  suppose  we  try  to  write  something  like  it. 
Since  it  seems  so  facile  a  thing  to  do,  suppose  we 
forthwith  write  an  oration  of  our  own.  Will  the 
fruits  of  our  pen  approach  the  artistic  excellence 
of  our  model  ?  Probably  not !  But  why  ?  We  lack 
Shakespeare's  vocabulary  ?  But  he  uses  very  simple 
words.  The  proper  noun  excepted,  there  is  no 
word  in  the  two  lines  just  quoted  but  may  be  found 
in  the  vocabulary  of  the  average  child  of  ten.  What 
is  the  secret  of  his  style,  of  the  force,  the  vigor, 
the  impressiveness  of  his  diction? 

Let  us  read  those  two  lines  again,  let  us  read  the 
speech  of  Antony  again,  let  us  read  the  entire  play 
again,  and  perhaps  we  shall  discover  something 
like  this :  Beneath  the  ease,  the  grace,  the  smooth- 
ness of  Shakespeare's  flowing  words,  we  perceive 
the  incessant  palpitation  of  a  tremendous  force,  a 
vigorous  effort,  a  vitalizing  energy;  the  throbbing 
workings  of  a  high-powered  mind,  the  vivid  striv- 
ings of  a  richly  equipped  imagination,  the  searchless 
depths  and  glowing  splendor  of  an  emotional  nature 
exceptionally  varied  and  sympathetic.  It  is  the 
art  that  conceals  art — which  is  another  way  of 
saying,  the  work  that  conceals  work.  Then  we 
think  of  great  musicians  we  have  heard,  of  fine 
orators  at  whose  words  we  thrilled,  of  masterpieces 
of  painting  that  in  imagination  we  see  again,  of 


MOOD   IN   THE  DRAMA  6l 

statuary  that  at  the  touch  of  memory's  wand  breaks 
into  warm  and  vibrant  life;  and  in  the  light  of  it 
all  we  formulate  our  third  aesthetic  principle: 

Beauty  in  literature  is  a  combination  of  energy 
and  ease,  of  ruggedness  and  grace. 

This  brief  presentation  of  aesthetic  principles 
evolved  from  an  inductive  study  of  "Ju^us  Caesar" 
lays  itself  open  to  numerous  and  multiform  attacks 
from  hidebound  critics  equipped  with  a  stock  of 
ready-made  aestheticism  all  canned  and  labeled  and 
with  full  directions  for  use  printed  neatly  on  the 
cover.  We  have  said  never  a  word  concerning 
pathos  or  sublimity  or  humor;  we  have  ignored 
the  weighty  utterances  of  Horace  and  Vida  and 
Boileau;  we  have  lent  a  deaf  ear  to  Scaliger  and 
Castelvetro  and  Geraldi  Cinthio.  And  this  we  have 
done,  not  because  we  are  indifferent  to  the  theories 
and  suggestions  of  erudite  makers  of  books  about 
books,  but  because  these  lines  are  written  for 
teachers.  The  teacher  cannot  afford  to  be  hide- 
bound. The  teacher  cannot  afford  to  let  his  aesthetic 
principles  harden  into  molds.  The  teacher  will  do 
well  to  lead  each  succeeding  class  of  students  to 
formulate  a  few  aesthetic  principles  for  themselves 
and  to  consider  those  principles  as  serviceable  scaf- 
folding which,  when  the  fabric  of  aesthetic  appre- 
ciation is  finished,  are  but  so  much  old  lumber  to 
be  permanently  cast  aside. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

MOOD  IN   THE  ESSAY 

THE  study  of  mood  in  the  essay  is  an  applica- 
tion of  the  principle  of  (Esthetic  appreciation  in 
literature.  Let  it  never  be  forgotten  that  literature 
— that  all  art,  indeed — is  largely  a  matter  of  mood. 
In  this  sense  a  mood  means  the  fusing,  the  concen- 
trating of  the  writer's  personality  and  experience 
upon  a  subject  viewed  in  the  light  of  a  moment  win- 
some or  reminiscent  or  whimsical  or  humorous  or 
what  not.  It  is  in  mood  that  essays  and  essayists 
differ  so  widely  each  from  each;  and  it  is  in  the 
mood  of  the  essay  or  the  essayist  that  the  reader 
secures  his  keenest  enjoyment. 

Mood  is  defined  as  "a  temporary  or  capricious 
state  or  condition  of  the  mind  in  regard  to  passion 
or  feeling;  temper  of  mind;  humor;  disposition." 
Less  accurately  but  more  suggestively,  we  might 
describe  our  moods  as  the  coloring  of  our  lives. 
Sometimes,  in  theatrical  performances,  vari-colored 
lights  are  cast  upon  the  stage  and  the  performers, 
and  surprising  and  delightful  effects  are  thus  se- 
cured. The  scene  and  the  costumes  remain  the 
same,  and  yet  they  acquire  a  different  appearance 
with  each  light  that  falls  upon  them.  So  it  is  with 

62 


MOOD  IN   THE   ESSAY  63 

our  lives.  The  facts  of  life,  the  realities  of  life, 
remain  ever  the  same ;  but  the  moods  casting  upon 
them  various  colors — now  yellow,  now  crimson,  now 
pink,  now  blue — change  their  aspect  and  lend  them 
various  degrees  of  attractiveness  and  charm. 

Writers  such  as  Charles  Lamb,  who  are  especially 
gifted  in  the  facility  for  conveying  and  stimulating 
moods,  are  like  the  manipulators  of  the  colored 
lights  in  the  theater.  Ordinarily  they  tell  us  nothing 
new;  but  they  enable  us  to  see  old  things  and 
familiar  things  in  novel  and  fascinating  lights.  This 
is  not  the  least  of  the  consolations  we  are  able  to 
derive  from  the  study  of  literature,  and  it  should 
be  given  due  prominence  in  the  teaching  of  both 
poetry  and  prose.  Let  us  learn  to  enjoy  the  witchery 
of  the  colored  lights  by  sitting  in  the  auditorium 
while  familiar  persons  and  things  occupy  the  stage 
and  the  gentle  Elia  manipulates  the  calcium. 

First  of  all,  a  lady  walks  upon  the  stage.  She  is 
our  aunt.  Now  there  are  all  sorts  and  conditions 
of  aunts;  and  there  are  all  sorts  of  ways  of  con- 
sidering aunts.  There  are  indulgent  aunts,  and 
sinister  aunts;  aunts  with  the  demeanor  of  a  mar- 
tinet, and  aunts  with  the  disposition  of  an  angel; 
aunts  tall  and  angular,  and  aunts  plump  and  rosy; 
aunts  who  give  us  cakes  and  apples,  and  aunts  who 
give  us  lectures.  And  the  same  aunt  may  assume 
several  distinct  aspects  according  to  -the  quality 
of  our  moods  and  hers.  In  his  essay  on  "My  Re- 
lations," Lamb  throws  a  pale  green  light  upon  his 


64        TEACHING  THE  DRAMA  AND  THE   ESSAY 

aunt,  and  presently  we  see  her  as  "one  whom 
single  blessedness  had  soured  to  the  world,"  "from 
morning  till  night  poring  over  good  books,"  "a 
fine  old  Christian"  "with  some  little  asperities  in 
her  constitution."  It  does  not  take  much  reading 
between  the  lines  to  discover  that  the  shorn  lamb 
must  have  suffered  somewhat  at  the  hands  of  this 
painfully  pious  old  lady,  but  his  mood  will  not 
suffer  him  to  dwell  on  the  tears  of  his  youth.  The 
passing  years  are  great  softeners  of  hardships,  and 
in  the  pale  green  light  the  lady  seems  a  bit  odd 
but  fairly  lovable. 

In  several  of  the  essays  Lamb  chats  about  old 
players  whom  he  had  admired  and  loved.  He 
reveled  in  the  theater  because  he  reveled  in  life, 
and  his  heart  was  filled  with  keen  and  not  unspoken 
gratitude  to  the  men  who  had  strutted  and  fretted 
their  hour  upon  the  stage.  Let  us  read  "My  First 
Play,"  "On  Some  of  the  Old  Actors,"  "On  the 
Acting  of  Munden,"  "Munden's  Farewell"  and 
"The  Death  of  Munden."  In  these  beautiful  papers 
the  author  casts  upon  the  stage  and  the  players  a 
soft  orange  glow  in  which  all  the  harsher  outlines 
are  subdued  and  everything  about  the  theater  worthy 
of  praise  and  honor  is  heightened  and  improved. 
How  different  is  this  mood  from  that  which  char- 
acterizes Gossen's  "School  of  Abuse"  or  that  which 
animates  some  present-day  editorial  writers  who 
seem  intent  on  finding  in  the  drama  only  that  which 
may  be  censured  and  abused !  And  how  delicately 


MOOD  IN   THE  ESSAY  6$ 

does  the  soft  orange  light  enable  us  to  draw  the 
distinction  between  the  man  and  the  actor: 

"The  regular  playgoers  ought  to  put  on  mourning, 
for  the  king  of  broad  comedy  is  dead  to  the  drama ! 
— Alas ! — Munden  is  no  more ! — give  sorrow  vent. 
He  may  yet  walk  the  town,  pace  the  pavement  in 
a  seeming  existence — eat,  drink,  and  nod  to  his 
friends  in  all  the  affectation  of  life — but  Munden, 
— the  Munden ! — Munden,  who  with  the  bunch  of 
countenances,  the  bouquet  of  faces,  is  gone  forever 
from  the  lamps,  and,  as  far  as  comedy  is  con- 
cerned, is  as  dead  as  Garrick!  When  an  actor 
retires  (we  will  put  the  suicide  as  mildly  as  possible) 
how  many  worthy  persons  perish  with  him !" 

Wonderful,  truly  wonderful,  is  that  soft  orange 
light  of  a  mood.  It  warms  our  hearts  and  it  brings 
the  ready  tears  to  our  eyes ;  and  to  our  memory  it 
recalls  the  old  days  and  the  plays  and  the  transitory 
character  of  human  fame.  And  it  leads  us  gently 
to  face  the  truth  that  we  are  all  actors  in  what 
Calderon  called  the  Great  Theater  of  the  World, 
and  that  the  green  curtain  called  Death  is  ever 
pendant,  waiting  for  the  Prompter's  bell. 

Yes,  we  are  all  actors ;  and  there  are  times  when 
we  all  love  to  play — to  play  in  the  spacious  Garden 
of  What  Might  Have  Been  and  to  cull  the  fanciful 
and  fragrant  flowers  known  as  Won't-Come-Trues. 
Our  smiling  magician  of  the  calcium  lamp  now 
floods  the  stage  with  rosy  lights,  and  we  all  de- 
lightedly join  in  the  joyous  game  of  "Let's  Pre- 


66        TEACHING  THE   DRAMA  AND  THE   ESSAY 

tend."  Read  "Oxford  in  the  Vacation"  and  you 
will  find  out  what  I  mean.  Lamb  shows  us  the 
sorely  tried  and  very  tired  little  clerk  in  the  South 
Sea  House  reaching  out  in  imagination  for  the 
scholastic  honors  which  were  destined  never  to  be 
his.  Like  the  little  boy  in  one  of  Thomas  Hardy's 
unpleasant  novels,  he  yearns  for  the  light  and 
learning  of  the  university  town;  and  in  fancy  he 
finds  more  recompense  there  than  Jude  the  Obscure 
found  in  the  reality.  He  goes  to  Oxford  in  the 
vacation  and  pretends  he  is  a  student — and  a  don: 

"I  can  here  play  the  gentleman,  enact  the  student. 
.  .  .  Here  I  can  take  my  walks  unmolested,  and 
fancy  myself  of  what  degree  or  standing  I  please.  I 
seem  admitted  ad  eundem.  I  fetch  up  past  oppor- 
tunities. I  can  rise  at  the  chapel-bell,  and  dream 
that  it  rings  for  me.  In  n*f|pds^mta|^^  I  can  ^e 
a  Sizar,  or  a  Servitor.  When  the  peacock~vein  rises, 
I  strut  a  Gentleman  Commoner.  In  graver  mo- 
ments I  proceed  Master  of  Arts.  .  .  .  Only  in 
Christ  Church  reverend  quadrangle,  ^t-ean,  be  con- 
tent to  pass  for  nothing  short  of  a  Seraphic 
Doctor." 

But  life  is  not  all  roses — nor  rose  colored  lights. 
Too  long  we  may^ot  linger  in  the  Garden  of  What 
Might  Have  Been.  We  who  read  these  lines  are 
by  profession  teachers,  pedagogues,  educators — or 
schoolmasters,  as  Lamb  would  say.  Can  the  whim- 
sical Elia  throw  one  of  his  colored  lights  upon  our 
life  and  work,  can  he  make  us  forget  the  chalkdust 


MOOD  IN   THE  ESSAY  67 

and  the  exercise  books  and  the  scraping  feet  and 
the  three  o'clock  fatigue?  Can  he  smooth  the  fur- 
rows from  our  disciplinary  brow  and  make  us  smile 
at  ourselves?  Can  he  give  us  help  and  inspiration 
for  the  days  to  come  ? 

The  answer  may  be  found  in  "The  Old  and  the 
New  Schoolmaster"  and  "Christ's  Hospital  Five- 
and-Thirty  Years  Ago."  From  the  point  of  view 
of  modern  "scientific"  pedagogy,  Lamb  is  doubtless 
very  deficient  both  in  wisdom  and  grace;  he  is 
not  "up-to-date"  at  all.  But — and  this  is  a  vastly 
more  important  matter — he  is  human,  glowingly, 
irrepressibly  human.  Much  of  the  little  play  at 
Christ's  Hospital  is  enacted  while  Elia  floods  the 
stage  with  a  light  sad  and  dully  blue;  but  ever  and 
anon  there  flashes  the  gold  of  his  quaint  and  dainty 
humor.  All  of  us  will  find  in  this  pensive  reminis- 
cence material  for  reflection  and  for  resolution. 
And  all  of  us  may  fittingly  apply  to  ourselves  some 
part  of  the  description  of  the  temperamental  Boyer : 

"He  had  two  wigs,  both  pedantic,  but  of  different 
omen.  The  one  serene,  smiling,  fresh  powdered, 
betokening  a  mild  day.  The  other,  an  old  dis- 
colored, unkempt,  angry  caxon,  denoting  frequent 
and  bloody  execution.  Woe  t*  the  school,  when 
he  made  his  morning  appearance  in  his  passy,  or 
passionate  wig.  No  comet  expounded  surer." 

All  the  glory  of  his  golden  pink  rays  Lamb  now 
pours  on  what  the  modern  world  would  consider 
the  most  useless  and  cumbersome  of  all  our  heri- 


68        TEACHING  THE  DRAMA  AND  THE   ESSAY 

tage  from  the  past — the  sun  dial.  In  his  "Old 
Benchers  of  the  Inner  Temple"  he  thus  glorifies 
the  dial  and  with  mock  indignation  castigates  the 
moon- faced  and  officious  clock: 

"What  a  dead  thing  is  a  clock,  with  its  ponder- 
ous embowelments  of  lead  and  brass,  itstpert  or 
solemn  dullness  of  communication,  compared  with 
the  simple  altar-like  structure,  and  silent  heart- 
language  of  the  old  dial!  It  stood  as  the  garden 
god  of  Christian  virtues.  Why  is  it  almost  every- 
where vanished?  If  its  business  use  be  super- 
seded by  more  elaborate  inventions,  its  moral  uses, 
its  beauty,  might  have  pleaded  for  its  continuance. 
It  spoke  of  moderate  labours,  of  pleasures  not  pro- 
tracted after  sunset,  of  temperance,  and  good  hours. 
It  was  the  primitive,  the  horologe  of  the  first  world. 
Adam  could  scarce  have  missed  it  in  Paradise." 

This  mood — a  fullness  of  the  golden  light  of  love 
for  things  old-fashioned  and  for  songs  long  sung 
— is  the  prevailing,  the  distinctive,  the  characteristic 
mood  of  Charles  Lamb.  And  that  is  why,  it  seems 
to  me,  he  should  be  assiduously  read  by  young  men 
and  women,  especially  by  young  teachers.  For  the 
ordinary  trait  of  youth  is  impatience  of  the  old, 
and  Elia,  so  shrewd  and  good-humored  and  ob- 
servant and  ready  of  phrase,  will  act  as  a  salutary 
corrective.  He  merits  the  attention  and  the  love 
of  children,  too,  for  he,  more  than  most  English 
writers,  will  teach  them  the  much  disprized  virtue 
of  reverence;  he,  more  than  the  flashy  and  super- 


MOOD  IN   THE  ESSAY  69 

ficial  idols  of  their  untutored  hearts,  will  develop 
their  bump  of  veneration. 

Lamb — and  in  his  case  we  may  profitably  study 
the  man  in  order  to  love  the  writer — had  a  number 
of  delightful  perversities.  Warned  by  a  friend  that 
he  should  write  more  for  the  age  in  which  he  lived, 
Elia  contemptuously  replied,  "Hang  the  Age!" 
And  expressed  his  determination  to  write  for  pos- 
terity or  for  antiquity — it  didn't  matter  which.  He 
was  an  urban  soul,  and  had  little  sympathy  with 
the  poet's  puling  verses  about  the  "bruising  city." 
When  Wordsworth  dilated  on  the  natural  glories 
of  the  lake  region,  Lamb  retorted  that  not  all  the 
rural  scents  of  Windermere  were  as  savory  in  his 
nostrils  as  the  smell  of  a  bakeshop  in  the  Strand. 

A  genuine  humorist  is  Charles  Lamb;  and  like 
every  true  humorist,  he  knew  the  meaning  of  suf- 
fering and  of  sorrow.  We  have  no  space  here  to 
dilate  on  the  great  shadow  that  lengthened  itself 
through  most  of  his  years,  of  the  happy  hopes  which 
at  the  call  of  duty  he  manfully  put  aside,  of  the 
anguish  which  might  have  driven  a  lesser  soul  into 
pessimistic  bitterness  but  which  in  his  case  was  but 
the  steel  on  which  he  sharpened  the  edge  of  his 
genial  wit.  Those  of  us  who  would  know  him  at 
his  finest  and  truest  and  noblest  and  best,  those  of 
us  who  seek  his  mastery  of  the  moods  at  its  high- 
est manifestation  would  do  well  to  read — several 
times — his  little  essay,  "Dream  Children:  A  Rev- 
erie." Permit  me  to  stress  that  "several  times." 


7O        TEACHING  THE  DRAMA   AND   THE   ESSAY 

First  impressions  may  be  misleading;  but  final  im- 
pressions will  bring  us  verily  to  the  heart  of  life. 
In  this  life  of  ours  there  are  different  days  for 
different  moods,  and  different  moods  for  different 
days.  And  there  are  writers  to  suit  every  day  and 
every  mood.  There  are  moods  for  Browning  and 
days  for  Shelley,  days  for  Carlyle  and  moods  for 
Belloc,  days  and  moods  which  blend  harmoniously 
with  Francis  Thompson  and  Crashaw,  with  Kipling 
and  old  Robert  Herrick.  But  Charles  Lamb — and 
of  how  many  writers  may  this  thing  be  said  ? — has 
a  page  for  every  day  and  for  every  mood.  Happy 
are  we  and  happy  are  our  pupils  when  we  have 
learned  that  on  days  gray  or  gold,  in  moods  wail- 
ful or  serene,  we  may  find  congenial  company  in  the 
pages  of  Elia. 


CHAPTER  IX 

SOME  PRINCIPLES  IN  THE  TEACHING  OF  LITERATURE 

I.  Literature  Is  Chiefly  Concerned  with 
Authentic  Human  Emotions.  History  records 
what  man  has  done;  philosophy,  what  he  has 
thought;  literature,  what  he  has  felt.  Literature 
has  something  to  say,  in  an  incidental  way,  about 
man's  accomplishments  and  about  his  theories  of 
existence;  but  its  essential  field  is  the  domain  of 
human  emotion.  We  turn  to  Herodotus  for  Greek 
history;  to  Aristotle  for  Greek  philosophy;  to 
Sophocles  for  Greek  literature.  Hence,  the  teacher 
of  literature  acts  wisely  when  he  stresses,  not  the 
purely  intellectual  nor  the  purely  scientific  phases 
of  his  subject,  but  its  emotional  content.  Great 
literature  plays  upon  our  emotions  of  love  and  fear 
and  admiration  and  gratitude  and  reverence  and 
pity  and  joy;  it  moves  us  and  it  thrills. 

By  authentic  emotions  we  mean  the  feelings  that 
pertain  to  our  common  humanity,  that  ring  true  to 
universal  human  experience.  The  classics — that  is, 
the  great  books  of  past  ages — present  emotions  that 
stir  us  even  across  the  chasm  of  the  years,  because 
we  find  in  them  echoes  of  what  we  ourselves  have 
felt  and  understood.  The  sisterly  devotion  of 
Antigone,  the  fine  spirit  of  comradeship  of  the 


72        TEACHING  THE  DRAMA  AND   THE   ESSAY 

faithful  Achates,  Dante's  reverence  for  his  old 
master  even  in  the  depths  of  hell,  the  remorse  of 
Macbeth,  the  pretentiousness  of  Monsieur  Jourdain, 
the  unsated  yearning  of  Faust — these  are  repre- 
sentative human  feelings,  and  are  therefore  authen- 
tic. In  its  essentials,  human  emotion  does  not 
change  throughout  the  ages. 

Wise  is  the  teacher  who  strives  to  bring  young 
minds  to  realize  that  in  this  respect  there  is  verily 
nothing  new  under  the  sun;  that,  because  they  are 
true  to  universal  human  life,  the  great  books  can 
never  die. 

II.  In  the  Firmament  of  Literature,  Star  Dif- 
fereth  from  Star  in  Glory.  "Resolved,  that  Shake- 
speare is  a  greater  writer  than  Longfellow."  Tra- 
dition has  it — I  devoutly  hope  that  tradition  herein 
errs — that  such  was  the  topic  once  set  for  children 
to  debate.  Such  misconceptions  of  literary  values 
sometimes  result  from  the  textbook  study  of  litera- 
ture in  which  a  writer's  relative  importance  is 
measured  by  the  number  of  pages  devoted  to  a  dis- 
cussion of  his  life  and  works. 

Our  pupils  must  be  brought  to  recognize  that 
both  Shakespeare  and  Longfellow  are  worth  while, 
that  both  have  given  us  valuable  interpretations  of 
human  life;  yet  that  "Evangeline"  compared  with 
"Macbeth"  is  as  a  penny  whistle  compared  with  a 
typhoon. 

Some  of  them  will  need  to  be  warned  against  a 
condescending  attitude  toward  penny  whistles. 


PRINCIPLES   IN    TEACHING  OF  LITERATURE       73 

They  must  be  taught  to  appreciate  the  lesser  lights 
as  well  as  first  magnitude  stars.  A  right  sense  of 
proportion  in  literary  matters  seeks  to  appraise 
every  sincere  record  of  authentic  human  emotion 
precisely  for  what  it  is  worth.  And  the  most  salu- 
tary attitude  of  the  pupil  should  be:  What  has 
Shakespeare  to  teach  me;  what  has  Longfellow  to 
teach  me?  It  is  well  that  we  be  stirred  to  the  depths 
of  our  soul  by  the  spectacle  of  ambition  and  unwise 
love  and  unavailing  remorse  staged  for  us  in  the 
drama  of  the  Thane  of  Cawdor;  and  it  is  likewise 
well  that  the  surface  of  our  soul  be  ruffled  and  puri- 
fied by  the  contemplation  of  the  Acadian  maiden's 
tried  and  beautiful  life. 

The  study  of  literature  is  not  a  competitive  exer- 
cise. Hence,  class  discussions  involving  the  ques- 
tion whether  or  not  Cardinal  Newman  is  a  greater 
writer  than  Aristophanes  are  idle  and  even  harmful. 
To  what  extent,  rather  we  should  ask,  did  each  of 
those  two  widely  different  writers  reveal  and  inter- 
pret our  common  human  life  ?  That  question  voices 
a  basic  principle  of  literary  study. 

III.  Right  Reading  Broadens  Our  Sympathies. 
Our  outlook  on  the  world  of  books  must  be  catholic 
—with  the  small  "c"  as  well  as  with  the  capital. 
The  great  books  lead  us  out  of  the  walled  garden 
of  our  individual  environment  and  offer  us  the 
alluring  possibility  of  living  vicariously  in  other 
times  and  alien  lands.  The  fine  fruitage  of  literary 
culture  includes  a  comprehensive  understanding  of 


74        TEACHING  THE  DRAMA  AND  THE  ESSAY 

many  phases  of  human  emotion  that  we  can  never, 
in  the  nature  of  things,  expect  to  learn  from  per- 
sonal experience. 

Observe  how  narrow  is  the  range  of  the  boy's 
interests.  He  doesn't  like  "sissy  books,"  that  is, 
books  that  deal  mainly  with  the  life  and  experiences 
of  girls;  he  characterizes  stories  that  stress  the 
description  of  natural  scenery  as  offensively  "dry" ; 
he  is  very  suspicious  of  Dickens,  because  the  pic- 
tures show  people  in  old-fashioned  clothes; 
"Fabiola"  is  "too  pious,"  "Cranford"  lacking  in  the 
indispensable  element  of  "fighting";  Scott  is  too 
slow  in  starting,  Thackeray  altogether  too  long. 
Now,  one  of  the  reasons  why  the  teacher  exists  is 
to  show  that  boy  that  folks  who  have  narrow  likes 
miss  much  of  the  fun  and  much  of  the  opportunity 
and  much  of  the  consolation  of  life.  And  this  the 
teacher  accomplishes,  not  by  scolding,  not  by  exhort- 
ing, not  by  command  or  entreaty,  but  by  the  tactful 
process  of  arousing  interest  in  some  phase  or  other 
of  the  too  hastily  condemned  book. 

As  the  boy  reads  and  grows  and  lives — all  three 
processes  being  subject  to  adequate  though  not 
obtrusive  direction — he  comes  to  perceive  that  even 
"sissies"  have  their  uses  in  life  as  in  books,  that 
there  is  so  much  natural  scenery  in  the  world 
around  us  that  its  importance  in  literature  is  great, 
that  under  antiquated  garments  there  often  beat  sur- 
prisingly modern  hearts,  that  some  of  the  greatest 
men  and  books  have  been  frankly  devotional,  that 


PRINCIPLES   IN    TEACHING  OF  LITERATURE        75 

manifestations  of  the  combative  instinct  are  in 
inverse  ratio  to  our  advance  in  civilization,  that 
it  is  worth  while  waiting  for  some  good  things  to 
start  and  that  excellence  in  books  as  in  life  cannot 
be  measured  with  a  yardstick  or  a  stopwatch. 

IV.  Poetry  Should  Be  Read  Aloud.  Nobody 
in  his  sober  senses  would  content  himself  with 
studying  a  masterpiece  of  painting  by  means  of  the 
sense  of  touch  or  absorbing  a  musical  composition 
by  thumbing  the  score.  Yet  there  are  persons  who 
seem  satisfied  by  merely  looking  at  a  poem. 

The  appeal  of  poetry  is  fundamentally  to  the  ear. 
It  has  a  musical  element,  and  that  musical  element  is 
its  distinguishing  formal  characteristic.  It  demands 
vocal  interpretation. 

"Yes,  I  will  be  thy  priest,  and  build  a  fane 

In  some  untrodden  region  of  my  mind, 
Where  branched  thoughts,  new-grown  with  pleasant  pain, 

Instead  of  pines  shall  murmur  in  the  wind." 

Here  are  four  lines  from  the  "Ode  to  Psyche"; 
but  until  they  are  read  aloud  they  are  not  repre- 
sentative of  John  Keats.  So  much  depends  upon 
the  vocal  interpreter!  He  must  decide  the  degree 
of  resoluteness  to  be  suggested  by  "Yes,"  and  deter- 
mine whether  "I  will  be  thy  priest"  is  an  assurance 
or  a  threat.  His  imagination  must  turn  architect 
at  "build  a  fane"  and  construct  a  cathedral  of  the 
frozen  music  of  angelic  songs.  He  must  convey 
the  stillness  and  the  sanctity  of  the  forest  primeval 
at  mention  of  "some  untrodden  region,"  the  word 


76        TEACHING  THE  DRAMA   AND  THE   ESSAY 

"some"  being  so  rendered  as  to  charm  by  its  very 
indefiniteness.  He  must  make  contagious  his  own 
expansive  realization  of  "branched  thoughts,"  the 
tenderness  and  novelty  of  "new-grown,"  the  emo- 
tional antithesis  of  "pleasant  pain";  and  the  last 
line  must  have  an  echo  of  the  wind  that  blows 
around  the  world. 

So  only  can  "the  breath  and  finer  spirit"  of  poetry 
be  imparted.  Mere  analysis  can  never  do  it;  neither 
can  edifying  stories  of  the  poet's  pensive  life.  The 
teacher  of  poetry  \wust  know  the  technique  of  vocal 
expression — quite  as  much,  indeed,  as  the  teacher 
of  singing  must  know  the  technique  of  music.  And 
the  children  must  be  taught,  little  by  little,  to  master 
a  poem  from  the  inside,  and  to  render  it  by  means  of 
the  speaking  voice. 

V.  Great  Books  Should  Be  Re-read  Indefinitely. 
The  man  of  one  book  is  not  a  worthy  exemplar. 
He  is  to  be  dreaded  rather  than  feared,  for  he  is 
liable  to  be  an  intolerable  bore.  But  the  man  who 
reads  a  few  great  books  several  times  is  likely  to  be 
a  bigger  man  in  every  respect — save  possibly  in 
self-esteem — than  the  man  who  is  ever  seeking 
some  new  thing. 

Some  men  read  masterpieces  as  they  suck 
oranges,  and  they  can  be  traced  through  a  library 
by  the  pulp  and  rind  of  the  discarded  classics  which 
they  have  exhausted.  Great  books  are  not  globes 
of  fruit  juice,  but  fountains  of  living  water  ever 
fresh  and  inexhaustible. 


PRINCIPLES   IN   TEACHING  OF  LITERATURE        77 

Formalism  in  education  has  its  place  and  its  bene- 
fits, but  it  has  its  baleful  consequences  as  well ;  and 
not  the  least  of  these  is  the  attitude  of  mind  found 
in  many  pupils  who  assume  that  once  a  book  is  read 
it  should  remain  a  closed  book  forever  more. 
Teachers  who  never  refer  back  to  books  studied 
or  discussed  last  month  or  last  year  do  much  to 
fortify  the  unfortunate  conviction. 

Children,  naturally  seekers  after  novelty,  should 
be  brought  to  realize  that  there  are  several  books 
which  the  human  race  has  been  reading  for  centu- 
ries and  has  not  quite  exhausted  even  today.  The 
New  Testament,  for  instance,  yields  more  and  yet 
more  nourishment  every  time  it  is  approached;  we 
read  the  same  gospel  on  the  same  Sunday  year  after 
year  and  never  fail  to  find  in  it  something  hitherto 
unsuspected. 

The  best  way  to  re-read  is  to  take  a  fresh  view- 
point— to  look  for  something  new  in  the  old  book. 
Now  we  read  it  for  the  plot,  now  for  the  characters, 
now  for  the  scenic  colorings,  now  for  its  truth  to 
the  life  about  us,  now  for  its  truth  to  the  life 
depicted  in  other  books,  now  for  its  truth  to  the 
life  of  a  given  period  of  history,  now  for  its 
embodiment  of  a  truth  of  faith  or  a  gospel  maxim, 
now  for  the  charm  of  its  literary  style.  And  by  that 
time  we  are  old  enough  to  begin  all  over  again. 

VI.  The  Highest  Art  Is  the  Art  that  Conceals 
Art.  Let  us  gaze  upon  that  world  wonder,  the 
Cathedral  of  Notre  Dame.  It  is  a  symphony  in 


78        TEACHING  THE  DRAMA   AND  THE   ESSAY 

stone,  complex  in  its  simplicity,  unitary  in  its  va- 
riety. It  conveys  the  impression  of  being  finished, 
adequate,  complete.  And  we  feel  that  we  might  well 
believe  it  were  we  told  that  it  was  not  wrought  by 
human  hands  through  hot  and  toiling  years,  but 
that  an  angel  floated  down  one  day  from  highest 
Heaven  and  waved  a  silver  wand,  and  lo,  the 
Cathedral  was. 

That  is  the  art  that  conceals  art.  We  have  no 
suggestion  of  the  excavations  made  for  the  founda- 
tions, of  the  carefully  pondered  plans,  of  the  strain- 
ing derricks  and  swaying  stones,  of  the  angry  shouts 
of  the  master  builders,  of  the  swarming  workmen 
with  sweating  faces  and  corded  muscles  and  aching 
backs.  These  are  no  more  suggested  by  the  grand 
Cathedral  than  is  the  caterpillar's  crawling  life  in 
the  careening  existence  of  the  emancipated  butterfly. 

And  so  it  is  in  literature.  The  most  perfect  style' 
is  the  style  that  seemingly  came  by  magic,  uncon- 
sciously and  spontaneously.  The  great  drama  has 
no  deus  ex  machina  let  down  to  the  stage  on  creak- 
ing pulleys;  the  great  novel  has  a  plot  that  rises 
and  falls,  not  with  the  exactitude  of  a  Freytagian 
pyramidal  diagram,  but  with  the  seeming  capricious- 
ness  of  the  contour  of  the  distant  hills;  the  great 
poem  has  no  suggestion  of  beats,  of  measures,  of 
feet,  of  accented  and  unaccented  syllables,  of  the 
toil  and  anguish  of  satisfying  sound  and  sense,  but 
just  the  clear,  full  melody  of  the  lark's  morning 
song,  the  majestic  music  of  the  waterfall,  the 


PRINCIPLES   IN   TEACHING  OF  LITERATURE       79 

mystery  and  magic  and  infinite  ease  of  the  wailing 
of  the  wind. 

The  carpenter,  when  he  is  finished  with  his  job, 
sweeps  up  the  chips  and  sawdust  and  boxes  his 
tools;  and  the  worker  in  words  removes  from  his 
masterpiece  the  very  last  indication  of  his  labor 
before  he  draws  the  curtain  and  bids  us  enter  and 
do  homage. 

VII.  True  Criticism  Is  Mainly  Appreciative. 
"I  am  nothing  if  not  critical,"  said  lago,  meaning 
that  he  was  mainly  interested  in  finding  fault;  and 
later  on, 

"I  confess,  it  is  my  nature's  plague 
To  spy  into  abuses,  and  oft  my  jealousy 
Shapes  faults  that  are  not", 

Is  it  any  wonder  that  lago  was  a  mischief  maker 
and  a  thoroughly  bad  egg?  "To  spy  into  abuses" 
is  the  favorite  diversion  of  numerous  literary 
lagos — self-constituted  critics  whose  prevailing  atti- 
tude toward  literary  masterpieces  resembles  that 
of  the  ingenuous  gentleman  who,  standing  for  the 
first  time  before  the  Sistine  Madonna,  impressively 
inquired,  "What  is  the  fault  with  that  painting?" 

lago  criticism  is  pseudo  criticism.  The  true  critic 
— and  remember,  please,  that  every  reader  is  a  critic 
— is  less  an  arbiter  than  an  appreciator ;  at  all  events, 
he  need  never  be  a  hangman.  From  reading  the 
best  and  thinking  the  best  he  has  formed — or  rather, 
is  constantly  forming — his  literary  taste,  and  when 
he  encounters  a  book  which  offends  that  taste  seri- 


8O        TEACHING  THE   DRAMA   AND  THE   ESSAY 

ously  and  persistently,  he  simply  dismisses  it  and 
turns  to  another  book.  But  he  rarely  meets  a  book 
that  is  thoroughly  bad.  In  every  book  he  reads  he 
finds  much  to  admire  and  something  that  offends, 
and  the  offensive  elements  he  speedily,  almost  auto- 
matically, forgets.  He  knows  that  nuts  are  sweet 
and  highly  nutritious  though  their  shells  are  neither 
edible  nor  pleasant  to  crack.  And  he  can  partake 
profitably  of  the  apples  on  yonder  tree  without 
once  remarking  that  it  is  a  great  pity  that  one  can't 
eat  leaves  and  trunk  and  that  the  roots  are  so  very 
dirty. 

Remember  how  Matthew  Arnold  put  it :  "A  dis- 
interested endeavor  to  learn  and  to  propagate  the 
best  that  is  known  and  thought  in  the  world."  That 
is  criticism;  that  is  appreciation.  That  is  a  con- 
structive force,  not  a  destructive  inutility. 

VIII.  "The  Supreme  Excellency  Is  Sim- 
plicity." The  teaching  of  literature  is  an  art  sec- 
ond in  importance  only  to  the  making  of  literature. 
They  have  much  in  common.  Many  of  the  things 
the  teacher  learns  from  the  great  books  of  the 
world  he  can  apply  in  a  practical  way  to  his  daily 
work.  Not  the  least  of  these  is  the  lesson  that  the 
highest  art  is  the  art  that  conceals  art,  that — as 
Longfellow,  who  was  both  a  maker  and  a  teacher, 
exquisitely  phrased  it — "the  supreme  excellency  is 
simplicity." 

Therefore,  whatever  be  his  panoply  of  learning, 
the  teacher  will  wear  it  lightly  and  gracefully. 


PRINCIPLES   iN    TEACHING  OF'  Ll'tfEkA^URE       8l 


(Strange  as  it  may  seem,  the  scantier  his  equipment, 
the  harder  the  task!)  He  will  never  make  quota- 
tions in  a  language  which  his  pupils  do  not  under- 
stand. He  will  not  drag  in  facts  that  he  has 
acquired  at  great  cost  but  which  have  no  bearing 
on  the  lesson.  He  will  not  assume  toward  his  stu- 
dents —  who  have  not  had  his  advantages  —  a  holier- 
than-thou  attitude  in  literary  affairs. 

He  will  not  be  dogmatic  ;  literary  "laws"  are  laws 
not  even  in  the  scientific  sense,  and  not  one  of  them 
had  its  origin  amid  the  thunders  of  Sinai;  there  is 
no  literary  pope,  and  even  in  its  palmiest  days  the 
French  Academy  was  not  an  ecumenical  council. 
He  will  never  forget  that  the  same  book  may  be 
the  strong  man's  food  and  the  weak  babe's  poison  ; 
and  he  will  remember  always  a  beautiful  literary 
allusion  concerning  the  tempered  wind  and  the 
shorn  lamb. 

He  will  be  conscious  —  of  course,  in  a  humble, 
chastened  way  —  of  the  dignity  of  his  office.  He  is 
an  inspirer,  an  initiator  ;  a  head  usher  in  the  House 
of  Fame.  His  business  is  to  introduce  young  people 
to  the  greatest  minds  the  world  has  known  ;  and  it 
is  very  bad  form  to  make  fun  of  celebrities,  even 
though  they  be  venerable  and  eccentric. 

Above  all,  he  will  keep  in  mind  that  literature 
can  be  made  a  ladder  mounting  upward  unto  God. 


